Therapeutic Milieu
The structure of Valley View School has been designed to maximize the benefits for our students. Over the last 5 decades, we have honed our program to provide boys with clear expectations and limits, real-time feedback and active adult guidance. We engage our students in intrinsically beneficial activities, such as academics, sports, community service, theater, music, art, and excursions into nature. Rules are enforced consistently and without drama. Through the accretion of experience within our structured milieu, our boys begin to internalize their own set of behavioral and emotional controls
Therapeutic goals of Valley View:
- Valley View functions as a "container" of sorts to limit acting out, withdrawal and psychic distress. Growth and maturity cannot occur until these negative reactions are contained.
- We assist boys in developing an awareness of their own thoughts, feelings and behavior within a social context. Through therapy, advising, mentorship and immersion within our structure, we help boys identify and begin to connect the dots of their experiences.
- It is essential that our students begin to "own" their own behavior and emotions. Instead of denial, blaming and acting out, we help our students accept responsibility for themselves, a major prerequisite for maturity and behavior change.
- We strive to restore a positive developmental arc. Many of our arriving students have given up on academics, sports, social life and emotional balance. We help them get back on track in these various domains of life and, thereby, begin to feel more confident and in a more balanced developmental flow.
- The development of a positive sense of identity is the ultimate goal of Valley View. To the extent a boy begins to realistically define himself as a good person who does good things, his decisions are more likely to be based on this internalized self-concept. At this point, he is ready to face the daunting challenges of today’s adolescents in the traditional world.
