The Golden Tree Vision

What do we plan to do?

We seek to develop a small, safe, and caring elementary and junior boarding school which has a strong focus on social, emotional, critical thinking, and executive functioning development throughout its academic and residential programs. A small school environment with well qualified teachers and residential staff will ensure exceptional instruction, support, and care are given to each student.

What type of student is best served by Golden Tree?

Any elementary or middle school aged child of above average intelligence that could benefit from our small, individualized learning community may benefit from our program. This includes, but is in no way limited to, home-school students, twice-exceptional students, and students who need a fresh start in a new environment to achieve to their fullest potential.

While not a requisite, our small junior boarding school environment is especially beneficial for students that have struggled in traditional academic settings. These struggles may have been precipitated by, for example:

• A high intelligence coupled with poor academic performance
• A general feeling of not fitting in with other students
• A lack of confidence
• Attention or focus issues (ADHD)
• Unmet needs as a twice-exceptional student
• An inability to self-advocate
• General, social, or school related anxiety
• Negative interactions or feedback from teachers or peers
• Being a target of bullying or negative peer-pressure
• Learning style differences
• High sensitivity
• Family or other life issues
• Underdeveloped executive functioning skills

Each student is evaluated for admission on a case by case basis. Our school is not appropriate for students with unregulated anger management issues, excessive aggression towards others, a consistent history of lying, severe depression, active psychosis, active fire setting, criminal behavior including theft, violence, and bullying, or current substance abuse issues including alcohol and tobacco products.

Activities

We provide a variety of unique activities tailored for our population and based on the skillset of our staff. Some activities that may be offered as part of our core program, extra-curriculars, or weekend and evening activities include:

• Play - Plenty of phyiscal, non-competitive group games and free time
• Trips for movies, shopping, sporting events, eating out, etc.
• Model building - Airplanes, trains, cars, boats, rockets, etc.
• Skiing - Cross country and downhill
• Strategy games - Magic, Pokémon, Settlers of Catan, Chess, etc.
• Movie Creation - from Story Boarding to Post-Production
• Construction
• Cooking
• Gardening
• Hiking/Camping
• Horsemanship
• Archery
• BMX

How will we help our students?

At its foundation, the small school environment will allow our well qualified staff the time to learn about the unique strengths and weaknesses of each child. The interest our staff are able to take in the students encourages a high level of personalized instruction, support, and care. For instance, does your child work best while lying on the floor or walking around? We can accomodate that. As a boarding school, staff will be able to promote social, emotional, and executive functioning skills during evenings and weekends in addition to the regular school day. Simply put, the added time and attention each student receives compared to a larger boarding or day school will allow them better opportunities to reach their full potential.

How do we plan to achieve our vision?

Developing a network of individuals whom share our vision and are willing to help us see it to fruition through enrollments or monetary donations is required. If you would like to serve as a resource, or have contacts with individuals or organizations that would beneficial resources, please contact us via the form on our site home page. Learn more about our background and needs here.

Location

A thorough location search will be conducted if sufficient interest in student enrollment is shown. Our internal list of currently available properties has six possible locations spread throughout the United States. We are always eager to learn about new properties which are suitable for a small boarding school campus. If you are aware of such, please contact us.