Parents who are considering whether they should send their children to treatment for a mental health condition or substance misuse issue are often concerned about the impact of such a decision on their children’s education. Their kids are most likely already struggling at school and they fear taking them out of school and sending them to Turning Winds will interrupt the compromised academic career even more.
In fact, the opposite will happen. At Turning Winds, their children will catch up academically while also receiving treatment services. As a residential treatment center with a strong academic program, Turning Winds offers a full continuum of care for teens with mental health issues while they also progress in their school curriculum. Our clients achieve success through a combination of therapeutic and educational approaches that provide the best possible outcomes.
Our teachers are fully credentialed and have extensive training and experience under their belts. One of them is science teacher Cathy Miller. She can apply more than twenty years of teaching experience to bring excellence into the academic portion of the Turning Winds program.
One important question on the minds of many parents is whether their kids will be able to return to the same school after they are finished with treatment. “One of the most important parts of my job is to make sure that when students are returning home, and they’re going back to the same school they were in before or maybe even a different school, that it is a seamless transition.”
The first thing the team does is look at the transcripts of each new client. “Most of our students come in with gaps in their education, simply because they haven’t been consistent in their school attendance,” explains Miller. “We identify those gaps and immediately start filling in the holes.”
Often, that means doing a lot of catch-up work, especially in math and science. “Toward the end of their time here, we work closely with the parents to make sure they are ready for wherever they’re going back to when they transition out,” says Miller. “We often also talk with the school they’re moving to, giving them everything they need to be prepared.”
“Academics is a very important part of our program,” says Turning Winds CEO Owen Baisden. “We have small classrooms with 8–12 students and there is a lot of one-on-one instruction.”
Turning Winds employs a hybrid scholastic approach to teaching with one-on-one tutoring, teacher-led instruction, and online schooling. “We utilize APEX for our math and science programs which allows us to line up a student’s education sequence based on their home state’s requirements,” explains Baisden.
On average our students earn a GPA of 3.5 while here, and in 12 months our average student completes about 1.5-2 years of school while experiencing a GPA increase of almost a full letter grade compared to their GPA before coming to Turning Winds.
“Our comprehensive curriculum for grades 7–12 provides everything your teen needs to get their education back on track,” says Baisden. Turning Winds offers almost any class our students need to continue their education. We work closely with counselors from previous schools for each student to ensure that all criteria for graduation are met.
We can also arrange AP classes and AP testing for students seeking an advanced level of education, and address both SAT and ACT preparation and testing for students to remain on track with educational requirements. More than 90 percent of our teens go on to college or a trade school after their discharge from Turning Winds.
Our goal is to make sure every student gets the education and support they need for success. We work closely with the counseling departments in every student’s previous school to fill in any remaining gaps in their current educational path.
In over twenty years, we’ve built a team of some of the world’s finest academic and therapeutic professionals, all of whom share the same goal: to help teens re-engage meaningfully with their lives, families, and futures.
For more information, contact us online, or call us at (800) 845-1380.
