Ostrum Joins Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School

The Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago would like to announce the hiring of Norm Ostrum as a Business Development Associate. Norm is excited to have an opportunity to work with a program that is fresh, vibrant, and full of energy.

For nearly a century, the Orthogenic School has been providing a safe haven and a pathway to hope for children and adolescents with extraordinary difficulties, helping them achieve extraordinary success. The School first opened in 1912 and became one of the first schools that served impaired children who had otherwise been deemed too troubled to be educated. Building upon the then revolutionary concept that an individually designed and emotionally sensitive environment can be healing for children and that even impaired children deserved and could benefit from education, the School operated a residential component that allowed these children to be cared for, treated, and nurtured outside the classroom as well as in it. The School's use of human relationships to foster innately positive growth and development has been well documented and emulated for decades.

Continuing nearly a century of tradition, the Orthogenic School remains committed to providing the highest quality of intensive therapeutic milieu treatment for children and adolescents (between the ages of 5 and 21) struggling with severe emotional challenges and/or high functioning autism disorders. The School provides a comfortable and nurturing family-like residential setting and is staffed by a talented, well-educated, and devoted multidisciplinary team of professionals. The School distinguishes itself by providing highly refined and individualized attention to the unique needs of each of the children who pass through its "Yellow Door" entrance. Working in collaboration with our families, we offer a safe haven and a path to hope as the students move toward becoming happy, productive, and independent young adults.

For most students and families, the success of the Orthogenic School is found in the balance between being a supportive residential treatment intervention while also being a strong academic program that prepares students to return to their local school programs or on to post high school education. A stand-out among residential treatment centers, the School offers departmentalized, and college preparatory classes for high school, junior high, and elementary students, and a well-functioning residential milieu that promotes individual autonomy at the same time building a strong sense of community. Individual, group, and family therapy are key components of the daily therapeutic regimen that assist children in understanding themselves and helping them become what they aspire to be.

Students who attend the Orthogenic School are bright students who have struggled considerably to manage their emotions and interpersonal relationships, functioning safely within daily life, and maximizing their potential as learners. Education is integral to the therapeutic milieu. The School creates an academically challenging environment where students can foster their identities as learners.

The School has seven classrooms each staffed with a certified special education teacher and a teaching assistant, along with a full complement of clinicians and therapists and additional therapeutic support team members, to help each student maximize their educational and social/emotional experiences. The School utilizes academic instruction with curriculum that includes study in all Core Competencies as well as Physical Education, Foreign Language and Fine Arts programming. The School also offers a journalism class in which students produce, Orthogenique, a literary magazine which encourages creative writing and art in a collaborative process among students. The School has small class sizes and ongoing support for Executive Function Skills. The student schedules are designed to balance social/emotional needs as well as learning requirements.

The Orthogenic School utilizes Milieu Treatment. The therapeutic milieu encompasses staff across the entire day and night (counselors, teachers, therapists, and support staffs) in order that the child may experience 24 hour a day, person to person, interaction and engagement. The milieu and its staff remains committed to providing a safe place where students can explore difficult thoughts, feelings and emotions and express them in adaptive, healthy, and productive ways. The School is committed to helping students develop their own internal capacities to manage life better rather than to foster an over reliance on external forces to control how they feel and behave. The School helps young people feel good about themselves and helps instill a sense that they can master whatever challenges confront them. The students tend to struggle with internalized issues and have diagnoses such as Major Depressive Disorders, Anxiety Disorders, Mood and Thought Disorders. Approximately 20% of the students have high-functioning autism. Each student receives individual therapy two times per week, group therapy one time per week, and family therapy is mandatory and occurs twice monthly.

In the residential program, there are six large open room dormitories. Each dorm group is led by a Master's or Doctoral level clinician and five bachelors or Master's level counselors. The group settings provide constant real life experiences to develop social abilities. The urban setting, located on the University of Chicago campus, allows for many diverse cultural and entertainment opportunities as well as the mastering of public transportation Family therapy is coupled with frequent home visitation, ensuring a more successful and less difficult transition back home or onto independence.

As an extension of the residential program, the Orthogenic School also offers a Transitional Living Program which is on-site. The students come and go from the school and commute with increased freedom and independence. There is a focus of community based activities, competitive employment, volunteer placement, and preparatory college coursework. The students are offered adult life skills such as budgeting, shopping, food preparation, and negotiating social service agencies when necessary. Students in the transitional program have weekly home visits and ongoing family therapy unless the students are from out of state. In this case, the students have as frequent visits as possible but the family therapy requirements are the same.

The Orthogenic School is accredited by Council on Accreditation (COA), North Central Association (NCA), and is a member of NATSAP. The Illinois State Board of Education Non-Public Special Education Department approves the School, which meets and exceeds all the core curriculum requirements.

If you would like additional information, please call Kristin Friesen, LCSW in the admissions office of the Orthogenic School at 773-834-7694 or you can reach Norm Ostrum at 269-830-8576.

The Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School is a coeducational residential treatment program for children and adolescents in need of support for profound emotional issues. The school provides young people, ages five to twenty, with a therapeutic and educational environment that recognizes their strengths and needs while challenging them to grow by achieving important developmental and behavioral outcomes.