Student Profile
Many people label the Holden School's students as "youth at-risk"; we prefer to call them incredibly resilient. In the face of tremendous challenges they are still looking for hope, still showing up for school, still looking for a way to build healthy, safe, and productive lives for themselves.
The student body is an ethnically diverse group of males and females between the ages of 14 and 21. The vast majority receive services from a state agency, most often the Department of Youth Services and/or the Department of Social Services.
A steadily increasing number are involved with the Department of Mental Health due to diagnoses including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and psychosis.
In short, they are young people who need help. We provide it.
The obstacles they face are among the most painful realities affecting young people today:
- Learning disabilities
- Emotional disturbances
- Poverty and malnutrition
- Parental neglect
- Physical and sexual abuse
- Multiple foster care placements
- Parents involved with drugs or in prison
- Lack of safe and affordable housing
- Inadequate health care
- Language barriers
- Mental illness
Very few have both parents regularly involved in their lives. Some are parents themselves.
When they come to us, they are used to expressing their anger and sadness in a variety of destructive ways -- aggression and impulsivity, lack of trust, substance abuse, unsafe sexual behaviors, and crime. We teach them constructive ways to deal with the hardship in their lives, focus on their studies, and prepare for the future.
Recent graduates of the Holden School have gone to beauty school and community college, become licensed auto mechanics, and found other pursuits where they apply the skills they learned here to become independent and successful.