Creative Approaches to Education

“JUST BEECUZ”

Although youth come to New Hope Treatment Centers mainly for psychiatric/mental health reasons, their educational needs are a large part of our treatment approach.  School is often not a strong point, and many times it’s been another source of rejection for the kids we serve.

For these reasons, we have to be creative and make learning a fun adventure for our sometimes-struggling students.

Just BeeeCuz is an creative educational program where our teachers provide students with challenging school work in an experiential manner, engaging in activities like: making greeting cards (get well, holiday, birthday, etc.)  to sell to staff,  making photo holders, gift tags and bags, and holiday candy grams.  Each activity has educational components built in, learning by doing.  Does that sound like what we did in school?  I think not, and these kids have our amazing teacher, Amy Thompson, to thank for that as Amy leads many of our experiential learning activities.

Math skills are enhanced via pricing for the merchandise, balancing books and measuring and estimating the amount of raw materials needed for their projects.

One activity had students used peppermint patties and made them into “Love pats” for Valentines Day and for Christmas they did the same and sold them as  “Ornamints”.  Again, the planning, making, selling, and evaluating the activity brings many lessons to the youth.  Learning can be fun for our students.

You may be wondering why it’s called “BeeeCuz”?  BeeeCuz our youth earned some extra money and they gained some practical work and life skills in a school setting.

Thanks to everyone at New Hope who are making the care and treatment of our kids the most positive environment that it can be!!!