The Bridge Way School will test whether by providing a high school recovery education program with student-led garden learning and arts programming, it can increase youth engagement and help them make progress in substance use recovery. Bridge Way is Pennsylvania’s first and only recovery high school and is designated under state recovery high school legislation to educate students who agree to engage in a recovery program while pursuing their diploma. Young people in recovery are not easily granted opportunities to have unsupervised activities in an attempt to keep them safe. However, Bridge Way, with ample support from a community of trusted adults, will offer self-affirming, off campus autonomy with plant and community-care projects. Students will work with a recovery artist-in-residence to curate experiences in the garden and its adjacent nonprofit arts space. This first of a kind, off-campus, creative experience will also test the transferability of an education recovery model to other settings, while serving as a model for other high school communities.
