Soccer season just ended and Discovery Academy students are gearing up for baseball and softball.
Laura Elliker, the Academy’s Residential Director, says both boys and girls will be hitting the ball fields.
“We didn’t have enough interest among the girls for a soccer team,” she says. How did the boys’ team fare? “Let’s just say we had a great time,” Laura says with a laugh.
Batter up!
Discovery Academy is proud of the men and women who work with our students as therapists, educators, and front-line staff. Each newsletter brings you a more personal look at some of the professionals who make Discovery Academy such a rewarding experience. We hope you'll enjoy getting to know them better.
Casey Pehrson, Girls Residential Supervisor
“Every day presents a new challenge. You never know what you’re going to get when you go in.” That’s one reason why Casey Pehrson loves her job.
Casey is the Girls Residential Supervisor. She’s been at DA for almost a year now. “I’ve always loved working with youth,” she says. Her prior jobs included camp counselor and piano teacher.
She was finishing a degree in psychology from Brigham Young University when she heard about a job opening at the Academy.
“When I heard the school was for at risk or troubled youth, to me those were just synonyms for ‘full of potential.’”
“I love the different personalities and to see how the girls support and complement one another,” she says. “When the girls come in they don’t realize what their talents are or what their potential is. When they leave they have confidence and they’re ready to take life head on.”
The Kansas City native says her love of photography made her first consider a career as a photo journalist. But psychology captured her interest and her heart. This fall she’ll begin graduate studies in that field at Brigham Young University.
She plans to be a high school psychologist, an author, and maybe even a motivational speaker. One of her favorite stories to share with Discovery students is from her own life.
“When I was 16, I was involved in a program for young women ages 12 to 18. I thought I’d heard every lesson, made every craft, done everything there was to do. One day one of my leaders gave a lesson that included this thought, ‘To the world you may be just one person. But to one person you may be the world.’ The teacher added, looking right at me, ‘Maybe this isn’t about you. Maybe you’re here for someone else.’”
“In my life, that has made all the difference.”
Benjamin Dailey, Boys Residential Supervisor
“I grew up on the lake,” Ben Dailey laughs. “I’m a competitive wakeboarder. I used to have to look all over Utah to try and find someone who would sell me a wakeboard.”
Ben also played competitive baseball until his college years. That’s when he decided to make wakeboarding his sport of choice.
That was back in the day. Before living in Chile for two years, backpacking through Argentina, and completing an anthropological/economical field study in Ecuador.
Ben grew up in Salt Lake City but has traveled the world learning about local peoples and working in causes to help them.
When he returned from Ecuador he was looking for a paying job that would still give him the satisfaction of helping humanity. He found what he was looking for at Discovery Academy.
“I’m one of the younger guys working here,” Ben notes. “I just turned 23. A lot of the things the students say or complain about, it was only a few years ago that I had the exact same perspective or thoughts.”
As a teen, Ben says he was often at odds with his father. “Now I would consider my dad one of my best friends,” he says.
He feels his own life experience helps him understand what he calls the lack of perspective many Academy students have when it comes to their own families.
He loves the daily interaction with students. “I love the opportunity to be part of their lives. I feel like I can use my own experiences to help them through some of their troubles.”
Welcome to “In the Loop”, – the quarterly newsletter for Discovery Academy. We’re pleased to offer news and information to enhance your family’s DA experience. In the coming months you’ll see updates on programs, information about our staff, relationship helps and parenting tips from respected authors and speakers. We welcome your contributions as well. Please give us your feedback at editor@discoveryacademy.com
Every other week your child has an opportunity to raise his/her level and enjoy new privileges at Discovery Academy. Thanks to the Parent Portal, parents are also able to have a voice in those important meetings.
Started six weeks ago, the Parent Portal is a web-based link to your child’s progress at the Academy.
| Parent Portal |
| The parent portal is a secured link that allows access only to your child. Parents log into the site at www.daparents.bluestep.net with a specific password. All information is student specific and password protected. |
| If you have not received a password, or have forgotten it, please contact your child’s therapist. |
On the portal, parents can review information on just about every aspect of their student’s life. The portal contains academic information – concept by concept – on which classes a student has taken and what grade he/she received.
Parents can check balances in the student’s incidental account. They can monitor any physical changes in their children’s well-being by following the body composition data updates. Students are weighed monthly and health notes are charted.
They can also view a slide show of their child participating in that week’s activities and even download or print the photos.
Most importantly, treatment team notes are included in the site secured portal. “Parents can read notes from their child’s teachers, his therapist, and the residential staff,” explains Matt Hendry, Discovery Academy’s Clinical Director. “Parents can read these notes and ask questions during phone calls.”
The Academy’s portal differs from other programs because it gives parents an opportunity to be heard during level meetings. “We really want to broaden the scope of who is included in the treatment team,” Matt says. “Parents are a critical part of that team.”
With the web based portal, parents can have their voice and views expressed as the on-site treatment team considers level advancements. “Parents can write how they feel the past two weeks have gone,” Matt explains.
Matt says only about half of Discovery’s parents are using the portal. But the reaction has already been very positive. “I have gotten so much great feedback from parents!” he says. “They’re not using the portal just to say, ‘My kid is great.’ They’re using it to say things like, ‘Well, he argued more than I thought he would’ or to provide other insights. They’re using the portal to further the therapeutic value of the program.”
That feedback, together with comments from the on-site therapy team, determines whether or not a student will receive a level raise.
“Parents always wonder how other people view their child,” Matt continues. “Now they literally have a voice. I don’t know of any other program that invites parents into that clinical meeting.”
Discovery Academy students are in final rehearsals for this year’s production of “Oh the Places You’ll Go.” Based on the fun and fantasy of Dr. Seuss, more than 40 students will help bring the play to life during the Parent Seminar May 29th.
Camille Jarvis, Student Services Coordinator at the Academy, says she loves Dr. Seuss. “I thought it would be really fun for the students to travel all over the world in this production. It’s full of big, bright, fun colors.”
Besides learning lines and technical elements of the production, students are also working hard to master four spectacular dance production numbers.
Be a part of the fun when the curtain rises at Discovery Academy May 29th!
Discovery Academy’s new learning center is in the final phase of construction. In addition to learning labs and student living areas, the center also boasts a special drama therapy room. This area features a small stage complete with professional sound and lighting equipment. Students will have an opportunity to take the stage as they use drama therapy to role play situations designed to help them better understand their own feelings.
The learning center is scheduled to open later this summer.
What does bouncing a beach ball have to do with a successful life? Discovery Academy students could probably provide the answer.
Recently Matt Hendry, Clinical Director, challenged his students to form a circle and see how long they could keep a beach ball in the air, volleying it back and forth.
“We’d get to three or four volleys and then someone would hit it as hard as they could just to see if they could mess up,” Matt laughs at the recollection.
During this experiential activity he noticed a student who was doing his best to keep the ball airborne. He had this student select a smaller group and try the activity again. The rest of the students stood to the side and watched.
“Before we split the groups, 11 was the highest number of volleys we got,” Matt says. The smaller, more committed group reached 194 hits before the ball fell.
“We processed about how much more difficult and more invested the group became the higher the number got,” Matt says. “The students also talked about how easy it was to goof around and drag the whole group down.”
What’s the point of this experiential activity? Matt says it’s a lot like relapse prevention. “Early in the game, and in sobriety in general, some students don’t care as much if they blow it,” Matt explains. “The more they have invested in sobriety the more it matters to them personally.”
He says although it was just a game, students were cheering for each other and paying close attention to what was happening. “Nobody’s eyes came off that beach ball for 194 volleys.”
“As we processed about the activity the students realized the longer you’re sober the harder you try,” Matt continues. “They learned the importance of being with friends who have that same level of commitment.”
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