Boarding

[u/eveandlylith]

Hello All, I’m reaching out to see if any of you have experience with Thunderbird Adventist Academy. I attended a boarding academy, it was really hard and I’m still working through some of the lingering memories.
Anyway, my cousin is sending her child to Thunderbird Adventist Academy. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[u/Anon_urmom_305]

I know many people who attended Thunderbird, but not anytime recently.

Every SDA academy is a bad idea.

[u/salexcopeland]

Never even heard of it but I definitely wouldn't recommend Adventist boarding academy. Based on my own anecdotal experiences it's a great way to learn about drugs, achohol, and devient sex at the age of 14, while being yelled at by people who claim to want to save your soul.

[u/Excellent_Crow_6830]

I went there for 3rd grade, back in 1974-75. They hired my stepmother, a hooker and child-trafficker, to work in their cafeteria. I would hope their background checks have improved by now, but wouldn't bet on it.

[u/Zeus_H_Christ]

I’ve had recent dealings with that school system ~6 years ago.

I looked at the elementary school out of curiosity for my child. Some lady in yoga pants whose kid went there gave us a tour. They let the kids swim with their teacher supervising within their pool. If you know anything about lifeguarding practice, water and light refraction and pool safety, you’re probably wondering how a kid hasn’t drowned there yet. Their library was basically a janitors closet and they didn’t seem to care about educational standards… but that’s the elementary school

Thunderbird appears to be typical Adventist boarding school experience. Disclaimer, I did not attend thunderbird, but looked at it and almost attended decades ago.

I went to two different boarding schools. The supervision is both overbearing and poorly done. There isn’t enough staff to adequately supervise many kids at all with my school having a dean and a head dean. The experience of both isn’t always vetted and they can and have literally just hired anyone from the Adventist faith. They do hire “hall monitors” to assist them.

Where I went the ratio of these untrained people supervising the kids was about 20 to 1 which is inadequate given that the kids can be scattered throughout campus and in their rooms. No one supervises the supervisors and there has a history of abuse. Side note: The previous assistant dean at my high school left after he was having a relationship with one of the girls.

The rules are overbearing with strict limitations on anything. If you hold someone’s hand you’re put on “social”. You have to attend church. You have to attend chapels and other religious events. You have a ton of puritan and conservative rules imposed on you.

The education in Adventist schools is also lacking where there is often much less of a priority on education. The sda schools always felt entitled to your presence. They felt if you were sda, you should be sending kids to them. Furthermore their most important job wasn’t necessarily education, but indoctrination as an Adventist and to prepare the kids to make the cut for heaven. This made it so they didn’t have to compete for educational standards with the community around them.

My previous school (Ozark) recently hired someone I knew from attending there as their science teacher. This guy had no background in science whatsoever and mostly envisioned taking the kids on hikes and outings because that’s what they enjoyed. The school obviously didn’t care about the kids really knowing science.

As a side note… this isn’t widely known but the thunderbird academy has been failing for years now. It has been kept afloat by a rich investor and business owner named C.H. (forgot last name) who had Adventist background/leanings. CH basically pays all the teachers salaries and puts some money into the school to keep it going.

[u/Aloysius1111]

I attended Thunderbird academy from 88-91. Fortunately I had a great time. I boarded all 4 years. It was very lax, yea there were things like getting put on “social” but no talk of EGW, thankfully. Yes there was church and chapel but I slept through both lol. We had pretty decent teachers with actual degrees, some came from public schools. I enjoyed it because I met a lot of cool friends, and they did a lot of to activities for those of us in the dorm. My experience didn’t include any over religious SDA indoctrination, no Bible studies or anything like that, but the food sucked because I was not us d to vegetarian food so I lived on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for a long time. I didn’t come from an uber religious home and would have definitely bucked had they been overbearing. I am not SDA anymore, completely left that denomination in the dust and haven’t looked back, but can’t really say anything bad about my particular experience there. I have zero idea how it is now. I Do know that a few people I went to school with teach and have teaching degrees, other than that I have no idea.