The reality is that therapeutic and academic issues are highly interrelated

Too often in residential treatment, academics is seen as separate from the clinical and experiential work being done in other departments. Because of this, academics often plays second fiddle. And yet, throughout their formative years, much of your student’s social and intellectual development has occurred in an academic setting. Academics is often where struggles first begin to manifest. Many times, academics, or the family conflict and stress around academics, are where those struggles were born.

“Academic Trauma” is Monuments’ term for the ways that negative experiences and a sense of failure in students’ past academic lives leave them feeling stuck, inadequate, and ineffective in a self-perpetuating cycle. “Academic Therapy” is our term for the ways that academics and therapy are married together at Monuments in a comprehensive program.

At Monuments, academics is experiential therapy: a place to assess students’ abilities and progress and a place for students to apply therapeutic insights and skills. Monuments Academy individualizes each student’s academic program, and students take ownership of their own progress across following objectives:

• Students learn how they learn, and what they need to be successful in school.
• Students learn how to advocate for themselves.
• Students take ownership of their education.
• Students develop a solid plan of what they are going to accomplish with their education after they leave Monuments Academy, whether they are continuing on with high school, college bound, or on a vocational education track.

Monuments Academy takes an experiential, non-traditional approach to education that includes both in-person and online learning options to suit each student’s personal learning style. Monuments does not push students through a one-size-fits-all academic program. Through our solutions-based, “Here’s the challenge. Show us your solution” approach, your student will learn to see their academic abilities with new eyes. A series of “little successes” built to reignite their intellectual curiosity and love of learning.