Aired: March 23, 2009 – 11:00 AM PST
Play
www.latalkradio.com
TITLE: Summit Preparatory School
SPECIAL GUEST: Rick Johnson
Executive Director of Summit Preparatory School in Kalispell, Montana started his career as an outpatient adolescent therapist. Now Rick and his co-founders successfully run the school based on how to best serve adolescents when outpatient care provides too little and long-term impatient treatment seems too extreme. Listen to this very informative show.
Summit Preparatory School
The typical student we consider for Summit Preparatory School is experiencing difficulties with school, family, and often peers. Generally, this is a child who has done well in the past, and whose family has watched him or her struggle more and more with life demands, despite the obvious potential for meeting these expectations. Often, the student has had little success in individual therapy, and may display a growing uncomfortable acceptance of “failing” in academic and emotional struggles.
The seed for Summit Preparatory School was planted twenty-five years ago at Trinity College in Illinois in conversations between college roommates Rick Johnson and Alexander Habib. “We always talked about wanting to do something to help kids,” said Summit Board Chairman Alexander Habib. “We started talking about it in college, and over the years just kept the dream alive.” That dream came to fruition in March, 2003 when Summit opened its doors to its first students.
“It’s a unique and exciting project on at least two levels,” explains Rick Johnson, Summit’s Executive Director. “On an educational and therapeutic level, the school strives for excellence with advanced college preparatory academics, along with caring and effective professional therapy.”
