Information
If you are interested in Tipton Academy, please call our admissions line at 877-968-8443
A Positive Place for Change 877-968-8443
WHY TIPTON:
Tipton Academy is different from other traditional academies for several reasons. The main difference is that Tipton Academy will take boys that are defiant and reluctant to be there. Another difference is the length of stay and the enrollment period. The majority of boys will be staying for one year. Tipton Academy has students coming throughout the year so there is not one set admission period, but ongoing admissions. This enables parents with a child in need of immediate placement to have somewhere to send them. Traditional military schools will ask a child to leave if they misbehave or if their grades slip. We will rarely ask a child to leave, but if the need arises we may assist the parents in finding another placement for the boy.
TIPTON ACADEMY PROMISE:
After successful completion of the program, if your son should return to his negative behaviors within one year, prior to his 18th birthday, we will accept him back at Tipton Academy for 60 days at no cost, with the following conditions:
The boy must:
- Be recommended home by TA staff
- Earn and maintain Elite status for 3 months
- Execute a home contract with parents
- Write the Academy once a month talking about his successes and failures
- Be enrolled for a minimum of 12 months
- Write the program each month to report how the boy is doing
BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION SCHOOLS:
Many parents with a defiant child start seeking help with the thought that a boarding school would be a good option for their child. They then find that many boarding schools will not accept a defiant child. The internet, also known as the World Wide Web, has many options under the search term "military schools" and "boot camps." What many parents have found is that the majority of the sites that come up when they type these search terms in their browser are behavior modification schools. Behavior Modification is a very old technique that rewards a child for positive behaviors and penalizes them for negative behaviors. The majority of schools for troubled teens today use behavior modification as their main method of changing youth behaviors. When a child is totally out of control he may be restrained or physically held until he is calm enough to begin thinking rationally again. Our program uses a combination of PPC, Behavior Modification, Cognitive Thinking and Animal Training. Because Tipton is a smaller school we are able to develop a program that will help most young men.
POSITIVE PEER GROUPS:
The Positive Peer Culture method used at Tipton Academy works on the principle of peer pressure rather than behavior modification. Negative peer pressure might be the reason your child is in need of help today. The power of positive peer pressure is equal to that of negative peer pressure. By having a student be accountable to his peers he learns what acceptable behavior is and what is not acceptable. When he returns home he will not have anyone to reward his correct choices. We believe this will undo much of what may be accomplished in a behavior modification school.
A Tipton Academy graduate will continually be surrounded by people or peers for the rest of his life, so learning to respond to those around him is a much more effective education than learning to keep a list of rules. PPC is successful because it doesn’t ask the student if they are willing to receive help, only if they are willing to give help. In many cases a student helping another student finds the answers to and the strength to help himself.
