ELAN SCHOOL

Poland, Maine
Deanna Valente, Admissions Director
207-998-4666
info@elanschool.com
www.elanschool.com

[Note: Since this Visit Report was origianlly posted, the Admissions Director position has changed to Connie Kimball]

Visit By: Larry Stednitz, Ph.D. - July 14, 2004

The Elan School was founded nearly 35 years ago when Joseph Ricci, who graduated from a therapeutic community himself and psychiatrist, Gerald Davidson, became disenchanted with traditional adolescent treatment. Both Ricci and Davidson are now deceased and Sharon Terry, Ricci’s widow, runs the school.

In the past 10 years, I have not seen another program with the depth of staff experience that Elan offers. The Executive Director began at the school 27 years ago; Admissions Director, Deanna Valente, has 20 years experience working with families; Clinical Director, Dr. Jerry Sapan, 15 years; Dr. Vander Putten, Medical Director, 16 years. The Academic Director, Frank McDermott, who retired as a superintendent from a public school system in Maine, started at Elan a mere five years ago, but brings a wealth of experience to the school. The four senior directors have been at Elan for 28, 20, 16 and 10 years respectively. They are directly responsible for the two houses where the students live. Five staff members graduated from Elan, and their history of employment at the school is 34 years, 28 years, 22 years, 2 years, with the last one recently hired. Leadership and experience are critical to a program’s effectiveness, and Elan’s strength is clearly illustrated in the staffs’ level of experience.

At Elan School, the program is delivered through a very complex therapeutic community/ positive peer culture model that found its roots in self-help substance abuse models developed at DAYTOP, Phoenix House, and Synanon. Students play a significant role in the school in the tradition of positive peer influence, meaning, the students actively confront others concerning their behaviors and attitudes. Students take order and responsibility seriously at Elan.

The student who toured me around the campus was leaving Elan in a few weeks. He was articulate about the details of the program, had clear ideas of attending college and moving on with his life. He appeared to be competent and business like in his demeanor with clarity of where he was going and why. Looking almost like bees around a beehive, the students I saw were completing their daily chores and duties. It was interesting to see how intense they were in their daily responsibilities, and one can only surmise that Elan places a very high emphasis on accountability.

Elan believes many youth practice “pseudo” adult behaviors and feel “entitled” to have had money, freedom and all the other benefits of our society. These youth have, for whatever reason, not had to experience the hard work of growing up, and they have not learned how to try, fail and develop self-discipline in order to persevere. Troubled youth tend to make “easy” choices in life and have not developed the maturity to make the right choices for themselves. They simply have not learned the life skills necessary for productive living. Elan staff said their focus is to help the adolescent not only stop negative behaviors, but to learn new ways of doing things.

The Elan philosophy is based on some important underlying beliefs. Therapeutic communities are not and have not been impressed with traditional clinical approaches to the treatment of adolescents. For example, Elan will not accept youth who require psychotropic medications. Youth who enter Elan School taking a medication are eased off the medication as soon as medically indicated. Elan also believes peer influence is much more powerful than adult influence, and the entire program is designed to bring to bear the power of positive peer influence. Individual therapy is not thought to have significant influence with adolescents and therefore is not stressed, but group work is the predominant counseling modality.

Because Elan has a powerful view of the group process and positive peer culture, the school has a very complex structure. This requires students to learn skills that enable them to hold positions of responsibility that require an increasingly more sophisticated skill set. Ultimately, through the “positions,” students and staff work side-by-side in running the school and student houses. Students enter Elan as a Worker in the Service Crew Department. This department handles cleaning, laundry and inventory while teaching basic accountability and the importance of basic work skills. Throughout their two year stay, students hold increasingly complex positions of responsibility in the other departments which include the Business Office, Kitchen, Communications and as Expediting staff. The system is far too detailed to discuss in this report, but it is run by a very detailed and complex system of checks and balances. The structure at Elan is very tight, and it could be considered one of the most structured unlocked programs in the country. The intensity of the program indicates that students who enroll at Elan would be those who have long standing character problems that require a high level of intensity in order to re-tool their behaviors and attitudes.

All departments provide opportunities for the students to either succeed or fail. They learn valuable lessons in caring for others, how to take responsibility for their own lives, and what it takes to be a productive member of society. It is important to emphasize at the heart of this type of therapeutic model, as influenced by early therapeutic communities, is caring enough about one another to confront inappropriate behaviors.

Elan students attend four two-hour group sessions each week. In two of the groups, students deal with conflict resolution, accountability issues and anger management. The purpose of the group is to confront various behaviors that have occurred in the community. These groups are modeled after the confrontational “encounter” approach used in early substance abuse treatment. They help students identify their feelings, and then understand how to appropriately manage them. The other two groups are static groups that deal with specific issues like substance abuse, adoption issues, men’s issues, women’s issues and learning problems.

Character education principals are taught and modeled throughout the Elan community. Elan calls these “Unwritten Philosophies.” “Relate, don’t react,” “Build bridges, not walls,” “No free lunch,” “Honesty without change is just another manipulation,” “Those who anger you, control you,” and “You can’t keep it unless you give it away.” During a student’s stay at Elan, these and other slogans are integrated into the student’s way of thinking. My student tour guide repeated several of these slogans during the tour. Elan strongly believes in another slogan, “Repetition is the greater part of change.”

Academics are a critical component at Elan, and this part of the program operates in the evening and mirrors the goals and practices of the entire school. Elan requires each student to complete their academic responsibilities at the highest possible level. Students are capable of earning up to 30 percent more credits than in the public school system, allowing them to catch up in the event they are behind in credits. Students can also earn college credits. The school administers SAT’s throughout the year and provides SAT preparation to its students. Elan is also very successful in competitions with local schools and offers a vigorous athletic department where students participate in cross-country, track and field, basketball and golf.

Elan students must have a minimum intellectual capability of 90 to be accepted. The students cannot have a need for psychotropics, and they cannot have a history of violent crimes. Elan students are often bright, manipulative, oppositional, experiencing school failure and conflict within the home. I would choose Elan for a student who has had previous treatment interventions, long standing emotional and behavioral problems, and a student who needs structure at the high end.

The buildings and related amenities are rustic, but essentially functional. Parents would not select the school based on upscale beautiful buildings and amenities. Elan would be chosen for those students who have a long history of emotional, behavioral and substance abuse problems, and for those requiring a significant and intense intervention if they are to unravel the serious complications of their lives.