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Innovative Academy Helps Struggling Teens Find Success

An Interview with Frank Bartolomeo, Ph.D., Executive Director of the Academy at Swift River

The Academy at Swift River (ASR) is a private therapeutic boarding school that is dedicated to helping struggling teens get their lives back on track.

Located on 630 stunning acres in the foothills of Massachusetts’ Berkshire Mountains, the academy is designed to continue the progress that students began during a wilderness program or other prior placement.

For the past two years, the Academy at Swift River has been led by executive director Frank Bartolomeo, Ph.D. With more than 20 years of diverse experience in the fields of child and adolescent mental health, Dr. Bartolomeo has played a key role in enhancing the academy’s effectiveness while ensuring that it remains true to its philosophy of respectful belief in the innate goodness and potential of young people and families.

In a recent interview, Dr. Bartolomeo answered a number of questions about student life at ASR:

What types of student is the Academy at Swift River designed to help?

Most of our students have had a wilderness experience or some other form of intervention before they enroll with us.

We need kids to arrive here with some willingness to be here. Students may not want to be at ASR, but they realize that they need to be here.

Students typically stay with us from nine to 22 months. The nine-month program is for students who need to complete their senior year of high school. Generally we see kids at about the 15 month level.

How do you help students transition into the ASR family?

For the first two weeks, all students participate in the Pathways Orientation program during the school day. This program serves as kind of a debriefing period between their prior placement and a boarding school. All the new kids are orienting and going through a curriculum where we explain our model, introduce our principles, and get them accommodated to our environment.

During the orientation period, the new students are eating lunch, playing sports and living in dorms with the older students. But for the first two weeks they’re not going to school with the older students -- their curriculum is the Pathways Orientation program. They are becoming acclimated to what it means to be an ASR student.

When they were in the wilderness, students were in a natural environment that was also artificial -- they didn’t have to deal with many of the stresses and pressures of everyday life. With us, the students are back in a more normalized environment, with all the stresses and pressures that go along with that.

The orientation helps our students transition into this new environment, and prepares them for the challenges that lie ahead.

What is student life like at the Academy at Swift River?

Student life at ASR consists of three primary domains: academics, counseling and community life.

In order for students to progress through our level system, the staff who are assigned to each of these domains must approve. When students apply for level advancement, it requires agreement from representatives from all three domains.

That’s part of how we educate our students -- that how they function in all aspects of academy life is important.

When they first arrive here, many students have a belief that the world and their environments will adjust to meet their needs. A lot of our kids come in with this expectation -- and we tell them that the world doesn’t work that way, so they’ve got to make the adjustments.

We’re trying to have them face what we think are the challenges that they’ll encounter in the real world.

What happens during the Family Working Visit, and how does it impact the students?

About four to six weeks after enrollment, parents come to our campus to participate in an initial working visit.

The student is involved with initial working visit as well. Students are sitting down with academic director, therapists, parents and their academic advisor.

It’s not just a fun visit or supervised family meeting. It’s focused on a specific objective. It’s a task-focused day with a bit of unstructured time, and it shows the parents and the students that we need and expect them to play an active role in the process.

How does the academy prepare students to return home?

Students make home visits that may last up to 10 days at a time. We gradually increase the length of time they spend at home, which serves as a barometer to gauge if they’re applying what they’ve learned here.Each time they go home, they bring a contract of things that they’re going to do.

We also work with the parents both before and after the visits to help them set conditions and evaluate what occurred during the visits. For example, over the course of the time the students are home, we want the parents to set limits to see how the child reacts.

The principle of the home visits is that they give students the opportunity to demonstrate that they are internalizing the external structure that we are providing at the academy; we do this by generalizing the coping skills they’ve used effectively at ASR to a less structured environment in which they will be exposed to all sorts of triggers.

Can students and their families get support from academy personnel after graduation?

If families choose, we have an alumni service that involves weekly phone calls for six months after the student’s time with us.

We will arrange for families to meet with therapists during home visit. We’ll make calls to the therapists. We’ll have students meet with support personnel at the college they plan to attend, and arrange for them to attend an AA meeting near the college.

Change is most frequently not a linear process, it’s a back and forth process. So we educate our students and our families that there will be setbacks and bumps in the road, and we provide them with the support and guidance they need to navigate through those obstacles.