The potential that adolescents have to turn to their lives around is why Rick and Jan Johnson sought to open Summit Preparatory School.

“An adolescent can make changes, let’s say in a year, that an adult — if they ever could — would take years and years,” said Rick, director of program development. “It’s exciting how many changes adolescents can make in a short amount of time. They can turn their life around.”

Summit Preparatory, which opened in 2003, was initially the vision of Rick and Alexander Habib, chairman of Summit’s board of directors, when they were undergraduate college roommates at Trinity College in Illinois.

Rick later met his wife Jan, who serves as associate executive director of program administration, while they were working as therapists at an Illinois youth agency and county crisis line. During this time they worked with at-risk teens who were struggling to function in the school setting. Jan Johnson said this work cemented her desire to continue treating adolescents.

This month, Summit is celebrating its 10th anniversary as a therapeutic, coeducational boarding school. The school can accommodate up to 64 students, and tuition is $200 per day.

In its first year, the school began with two students and ended the year with 30. Now, enrollment is steady between 50 and 60 students. While there has been discussion of possible expansion with a new campus, the Johnsons don’t have any plans yet.

“When you first start something, you never really know how it’s going to take shape,” Rick said. “I think it actually exceeded our expectations; we’ve seen a lot of kids turn their lives around.”

Northwest Montana is a place the Johnsons have called home for the past 20 years. They said it was the ideal spot to start the therapeutic program.

Students who enroll have struggles or crises to overcome, whether behavioral, emotional or medical. Taking students out of environments that may trigger stressors, such as school or home, is important for students to establish their identity, form meaningful relationships, live within structure, heal emotionally and physically and excel academically.

““There is something very healing about being in the wilderness,” Rick said.

The wilderness is also a place where students take “challenge trips,” participating in activities such as hiking, camping, canoeing, skiing and recently, dog sledding. These trips take them out of their comfort zones and test them physically, emotionally and mentally, said Todd Fiske, who stepped up as executive director last year and has served on the board for about 10 years.

“Our continued goal is helping adolescents retool and heal themselves,” Fiske said. “For me personally, I wanted to work with high school kids in my career.”

Summit Preparatory is an accredited school that serves students nationally and internationally. Bringing in international students is a fairly new undertaking for the rural school.

“One of the things that’s been really exciting is we probably didn’t imagine 10 year ago that we’d have international kids,” Jan said.

Rick designed a therapeutic model based on normal adolescent development specifically for Summit Preparatory. He said he couldn’t find a model that went beyond clinical short-term treatment that alleviates symptoms such as depression, but doesn’t address the self.

“What we know working on with adolescents for so many years is there are so many more things going on in the life of an adolescent that just taking care of just that one part it doesn’t address their whole life,” Jan said. “You have to somehow deal with the school part, and the family part, and their social relationship part — it all needs to go together.”

Students have around-the-clock care and supervision at the school, living and learning from a year to 15 months before graduating or returning home and re-enrolling in a traditional high school.

“Our model is also based on what the skills are an adolescent needs to have to be successful within relationships, emotionally and certainly whatever vocation they might choose,” Rick said.

This model is the basis of a new book he is writing that’s geared toward parents and will be published this spring.

With traditional classrooms, dormitories, common areas, a weight room, pool, gymnasium, music studio, library and dormitories, Summit Preparatory has amenities of both school and home. Students make their own breakfasts, do laundry, meet together each morning and are unplugged from cellphones and MP3 players.

Down one corridor, a student walks a dog between classes. The dog is one of three that visit the school. Students also volunteer in the Kalispell community and participate in programs such as theater or sports teams.

Summit Preparatory resident Chris, 17, has attended the school for 13 months and is one of hundreds of success stories. He said his parents enrolled him for a variety of reasons: trouble in school, bad relations at home and drug and alcohol abuse.

“I had just a general negative outlook on life. I wasn’t really going anywhere,” Chris said.

At first he was against attending, but he said his mentality shifted and he gained a sense of direction. Now he is planning to attend University of Montana in the fall and major in psychology or exercise science.

“I wasn’t college-bound at home. My grades were in the dumps and I had no intentions of going anywhere. So I came here and my grades have shot up.”

Summit Preparatory alumna Jordan Gilbert has returned to the school as a counselor intern. She attended from 2005 through 2007. Jordan graduated from the University of Montana in 2011 with a degree in anthropology, and plans to pursue a master’s degree in social work.

“I decided to become a counselor here at Summit in particular because I want to give back to the program that was pivotal to my growing up, and that gave me the tools to lead a happy and successful life thus far,” Gilbert said. “My hope in returning to Summit as a member of staff is to give current students support that they need from someone who has, indeed, walked a mile in their shoes.”