Explorations is excited to announce it is accepting applications for late summer 2023 and the 2023-24 school year. With over 33 years’ experience, Explorations remains a relevant and time-tested transition option for a student who is not yet ready to return to home or live in a boarding environment absent of therapeutic support. Explorations teaches real life skills in real time and provides options that allow its students the freedom to make choices and create their life within an atmosphere of support and boundaries. The advantage is clear: Explorations has been providing transition services for teens long before the concept and phrase of a “step-down” was even coined.

A mother of an alumni student said upon their son returning home, “ Over the next few months, we witnessed our son be the kid we had hoped beyond hope he would be. The withdrawn, anxious child was now joining us for dinner, games and movies. He talked about his day, where he was at, and what he was feeling. He was comfortable in his skin. The months … watching him push and pull against his Explorations family and support team molded him back into something solid. When I put him on a plane to Montana at the beginning of this journey, he was in pieces. Now he felt whole”.

Explorations students are a part of a larger community where they can independently go to school, learn real life skills, join sports teams, get jobs, volunteer, go snowboarding, manage their personal money, become certified in first aid and CPR, and learn how to use a cell phone with appropriate boundaries. Explorations is where the rubber meets the road and is where students prepare for the life they will move into after they leave.

About Explorations

Explorations is a teen transition program located in pristine northwestern Montana.  Since 1990, Explorations has created imaginative and unique living, learning, and recreational programming to meet the varied needs of our students.  Small by design, our highly individualized program is relationship-based and draws from the lessons learned in everyday life.  Our team members are experienced and strike the balance between nurturance and necessary boundaries teens need.  Therapeutic services, academics, civic responsibility, life skills training and outdoor adventure are the core components of what we do.  Real life in real time.