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Spirit Week
As the school year comes to a close, it's time to celebrate! All students and staff are welcome to celebrate with VDS Spirit Week!!! Monday FuNdAy! Team TueSday, WaCkY Wednesday and Throwback Thursday! Friday is Field Day - wear blue or white! Let's enjoy the last days of school! Click on "Spirit Week" for more details.
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Gardening
Students and staff are working hard in our garden. The organic garden will feature a number of seasonal vegetables and flowers. In our organic garden, Snipe's Farm planted a variety of fruit trees, berry bushes, and herbs that are tended by the students on a regular basis. Our students often have the pleasure of enjoying the fruits of our garden and have learned to eat natural unprocessed snacks. “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.” ~ Audrey Hepburn
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Bookfair
Wow! Valley Day School had a fantastic turn out at our Barnes and Noble Book fair on April 21st. SuperMan even showed up! The students enjoyed poetry readings from a former student, Ms. Serena. They also had fun at a bookmark making station, choosing new books and in good company of fellow students. We love to see our Valley Day Family encouraging our young readers!
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Meet the Valley Day Gentlemen's Group!
According to Darnell Alford, a Behavioral Support Professional at Valley Day School, "Gentlemen's Group of Valley Day is a mentoring program that shows our young men the characteristics of being a true gentleman and also helps prepare them for life's challenges after high school."
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Meet Our Clinical Support Team!
Within our trauma-informed environment, clinical and behavioral support is critical for the personal and academic growth of our students. We believe the root of many behavioral issues students face can be linked to traumatic experiences. Our behavioral and clinical support teams play an important role in fulfilling our mission by helping students identify past trauma and learning new strategies for growth and change.
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Meet Our Behavior Support Professionals!
Our staff behavioralists work directly with students to identify healthy behaviors and help students apply those behaviors in and out of school. When negative behavior occurs, our behavioralists will try to determine the causes of the behavior and work with the student, teachers, case managers, and family to determine a course of action to prevent further actions from occurring.
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Learn About Valley Day Leading Ladies!
Leading Ladies is a weekly group developed on the foundation of Education, Service and Mentorship. We LEARN about ourselves and how we are connecting and disconnecting with with others. We LEARN how to utilize conflict management skills. Finally, we LEARN how to maintain healthy friendships. As Leading Ladies, we SERVE our school and local community by collecting items and bringing them to local shelters.
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What is STEM Station?
STEM is a teaching philosophy that integrates all four disciplines together into a single, cross-disciplinary program which offers instruction in real-world applications and teaching methods. Makey Makey is a USB device that allows students to transform everyday objects into computer interfaces. During STEM Station, one of our students used this tool to create a circuit using conductive objects. Check out the video above!
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Brain Based Research
Brain science teaches us that behavior is not categorized by being good or bad; it is a question of being healthy or unhealthy.
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Trauma Informed Care
We treat the whole student while taking into account their past trauma and the resulting coping mechanisms while attempting to understand their behaviors.
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Cutting Edge Technology
We believe that the effective use of instructional technology is vital to teaching today's students.
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Clinical Support
Clinical and behavioral support is critical for the personal and academic growth of our students.
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OUR MISSION
To teach students the tools they need to lead a healthy lifeWe pursue our mission by incorporating evidence-based best-practices throughout our organization so that VDS-enrolled students receive FAPE and IEP-fulfilling education in a safe, structured, and supportive trauma-informed learning community.
Each day we blend trauma-informed care, an understanding of neuroeducation, and cutting-edge educational technology to provide students with the skills, tools, strategies, and experiences they will need to make healthy choices and to lead healthy lives both inside and outside of school.
We provide VDS students with a secure environment in which they can feel physically, socially, and emotionally safe while learning to understand their own experiences and how to productively change the way they respond to these experiences.
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S2SS is designed to help students and school staff recognize risk factors and signals of those who may be a threat to themselves or others. From a student perspective, S2SS teaches students to treat every warning sign seriously and to act quickly to get help by talking to a trusted adult and/or by reporting it anonymously to the Pennsylvania S2SS Crisis Center via telephone, mobile device, or website.
