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Primary Services
Charter School System
Public Schools
Summer Gift Enhancement
College Scholarship Program
Vocational Skills Program & PAL
Religious Education
HCYR works regularly
with children who have academic deficits. For those who recover in
time to prepare for college, we have a grants program. For
others, graduating from high school and preparing for employment are
worthy goals. Our goal is to help each child to the highest
educational plateau to which he is able to climb. |
If education is understood as
a means whereby a tree can be propped up into a beautifully
artificial form, then ours is not an educational method. But he who
has a higher conception of education will value most that method in
which the tree is cultured so that all the possibilities of growth
with which it was endowed by nature can come to the fullest
perfection. ~ Carl Jung
Every child living at Hill Country Youth Ranch or Big
Springs Ranch for Children is required to be involved in a range of
educational activities and programs that provide him with
the essential tools to live life, while enhancing special gifts.
The Ranch calls itself an "open-ended learning
system", which means that programs are constantly
changing to meet the presenting needs and interests of children in
care. Thus, as we work on prescribed issues of
learning and healing each day, we also seek the conditions that
spark discovery and motivation. Often, a program is created to meet
the needs or gifts of a single child. Over time, some programs
have repeatedly proven their worth and become regulars. As a child grows in
such a system, he discovers that his interests have value to others,
and that his work can make a meaningful contribution to
the whole.
For 9 months of the year, formal school is a resident’s "job". Each
resident must be enrolled in a full-time educational program during
his or her stay. As with therapeutic structure, several different
opportunities exist for children with various academic and
developmental needs. Progress is monitored
and academic deficits are addressed, regardless of which school the
student attends.
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An Educational Creed
A child
respects competence, but knows
who has touched his humanity.
It is our Creed that
there are two ingredients of great importance in the progress of a
traumatized child -- healing and learning. The
two ingredients are actually different manifestations of the same
spiritus sancti, always at work to lead a child forward to
light. Unfortunately, the two are increasingly divided in
modern traditional education, to the great detriment of all
children.
At
the Youth Ranch, we speak of transformational moments and of
teachable moments, in the same breath, with emphasis on one or the
other, depending on the circumstances. A teacher/healer must be
ready to deliver the right "medicine" or appropriate "instructions".
Both belong in an educational setting. |
