Tree Houses At Asheville Academy

Practice makes perfect! Well, most of the time. At Asheville Academy, we believe that lasting change occurs only when students are able to practice the many things they learn during the program. That’s why we’ve created transition programming for students who are preparing to graduate.

The “advanced tree house”, a dormitory specifically designed to help students prepare for the real world is less structured than the rest of our programming. During this transition period, students may make mistakes and revert back to some of their old behaviors. These mistakes are used as a learning tool in order to identify challenging behaviors and create solutions to work past those behaviors.

Advanced Tree House

Our transition dormitory, known as the “advanced tree house”, opens the door to many things that students may struggle with once they return home. Our advanced tree house:

One staff member will reside in the advanced tree house with students, as opposed to two in all other Tree Houses.

Students in the advanced tree house will spend weekends and evenings focused on traditional teen and pre-teen activities, including but not limited to, more movies, theater, live music events, overnight field trips, and educational experiences.

Asheville Academy has always focused on leadership during this phase of our therapeutic journey. During the school day, transition students will be assigned to their previous tree groups to practice leadership skills. They will have assignments encouraging the development of goals for appropriately holding themselves and others to standards, providing positive feedback, and age appropriate role modeling.

Students will be expected to manage their daily schedule (wake up on time, be on time for meals, school, appointments, homework, etc.) and play an active role in the community.

Technology Use in the Advanced Tree House

For many students, one of the areas parents are worried about is the misuse of technology. During the transition period, each student’s therapist spends time with parents who have this concern developing individualized therapeutic goals around technology use.

This is the time when therapists open a discussion around setting goals and structure of what each individual family expects from an “appropriate online presence” including: daily amount of screen time, types of social media platforms they can use, and password sharing with parents. These discussions are tailored to the individual needs of each family and help guide the transition process.

Asheville Academy can help

Asheville Academy helps young girls ages 10-14 struggling with behavioral or emotional challenges such as anxiety, depression, technology misuse, and school refusal.

For more information about how our therapeutic boarding school can help your daughter, please call 800.264.8709.