When children or teens exhibit troubled behavior, this usually stems from a larger issue or personal challenges that they are experiencing. Troubled behavior can often lead to poor academic performance, which can, in turn, affect the confidence of individuals.
How Whytecliff Can Help Kids With Troubled Behaviour
Whytecliff offers the BC Ministry of Education accredited curriculum leading to a British Columbia Certificate of Graduation. Whytecliff also incorporates the new BC Curriculum’s intellectual, personal, and social-emotional proficiencies, with a special emphasis on youth development as well as positive mental health and wellness.
Whytecliff offers students who have struggled or been pushed out of mainstream secondary schools the opportunity to complete their high school education in a setting that prioritizes their mental health and emotional wellbeing as well as future life success. We provide a positive environment, a chance for positive relationships and learning, and activities and experiences that are both interesting and enjoyable. Children find, often for the first time, that they are not alone and are part of a real community. Our low student to staff ratio of 5 or 6 to 1 allows our competent, warm, encouraging staff to see the world through each youth’s eyes, enabling them to be effective, caring, and empathetic educators.
Children work from materials and courses tailored to their particular learning style and discover, often for the first time, an intrinsic motivation to learn and be successful.
Whytecliff proceeds from a positive model of youth development that is designed to be subtle and gentle. Unlike traditional schools, Whytecliff Learning Centres combine education with therapeutic science to create a positive and supportive high-growth environment which pulls each child up to be their very best. By shining a light on children’s innate gifts, talents, and strengths, rather than seeking to ‘fix their problems’, the orientation is more like offering ‘vitamins’ and less like prescribing ‘aspirin’.
From our perspective, the goal is not to ‘curb’ or ‘contain’ behaviours but to build a sense of group cohesion and ignite a child’s natural curiosity (as these naturally diminish boredom-induced frustration and reduce acting out). The question becomes, how do we engage and harness a child’s authentic motivation, the kind that’s self-directed and leads to deeper learning? Once this motivation is engaged, together with good personal relationships, troubling behaviour naturally diminishes alongside the emergence of new, positive behaviour patterns (as children naturally grow and change).