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Comprehensive individualized education for every child

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.

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.