Boys come to Woodhall with a fragile self-esteem, sometimes anxious or sometimes overcompensating to mask their social, emotional, and academic vulnerabilities. Before Woodhall, boys may have attended traditional public or independent schools, other boarding schools, home school, and/or other environments.

Woodhall boys are bright, but they have a complex learning style, which is often difficult to categorize. Our boys might have a formal diagnosis of ADD/ADHD, ASD, or SLD. They might struggle with attention, motivation, executive functioning, inconsistent processing speed, and/or aspects of social understanding.

3 students

Their struggle has likely had an impact on their relationships with peers, teachers, and family members, and may have affected their confidence, motivation, and academic progress. Nonetheless, our students must demonstrate a level of coping skills to manage a daily schedule that, in many ways, has the rigor of a traditional college-preparatory boarding school.

teachers playing board game with students

Woodhall faculty members – who serve as teachers, dorm parents, and coaches, and, above all, adult mentors – meet the boys where they are. We recognize that each boy’s arc of growth is different. The Woodhall process ensures that each boy becomes a young man who develops the capacity to deal with setbacks and a realistic sense of his strengths and weaknesses.