Terminology

The Basics

*4-H: A club we belong to that encourages strong personal values, concern for others, work ethic, and a healthy lifestyle. It has many projects such as showing and learning about bunnies.

4-H: A program they enrolled students in. You must participate if you have a bunny to take care of or you'll get punished.

*Achievement Awards: Academic awards earned by students who excel.

*Activity Director: A staff member who plans our activities during the normal week and during break weeks. She is also our PE Teacher and soccer coach.

Activity Director: The staff member who plans all activities and teaches our PE class and soccer team. She is also in charge of the bunnies activities, supplies, and health even if she knows nothing about them.

*Admin Building: Where the offices are for the director and other administrative personnel.

Admin building: Where the therapists offices are. The building they just mentioned is a ways away where students aren't allowed.

*Atta-Girl: An honor given to a student who has been observed by a teacher to do random acts of kindness.

*Bug Rug: A designated place in the home for girls to go to when they need some quiet time.

Bug Rug: A place in the home people rarely get to sit because you have too many responsibilities. You can only use it in your free time or if you're emotional. If you need some “quiet time” that’s what the HHC was for. If you have a spot restriction, you may not sit on the bug rug at any point in time no matter the circumstances.

*Bunny Barn: The Building where the bunnies live.

Bunny Barn: The shed where they keep the bunnies. I wouldn’t say they “live” there, it's more like they are "kept in tiny wire cages until the end of their days". You can see pictures for it in the Photos section or in the Diagram section.

*Buttercup Hut: The building structure made for playing and sliding down the pole.

Buttercup Hut: The building structure that is advertised for playing, but it's only used for group photos. On the rare occasion people are allowed outside to play, only Tumbleweed is allowed to use it.

*Charm Necklace: A necklace that holds charms that girls earn for achievements and participation in events. It must be worn or brought to Community Meetings and Groups.

*Chore Checker: A student whose job is to check others' chores to make sure they were done properly.

*Dessert Pick: One may pick this out of the Grab Bag. It is where she can choose what everyone will have for dessert for one evening.

*Fair: Each student who has earned their bunny has the opportunity to enter it in the Deschutes County Fair. Their bunny is shown in two designated classes, breed class and showmanship class. Depending on the student’s knowledge of their bunny and presentation of their bunny, she can earn awards.

Fair: The reason we participate in 4-H. Fair is a public event. We don’t “have the opportunity”, we’re forced out of our comfort zone and if we don’t participate, you get in trouble back at the house. Fair is a public event where you show your bunny is shown and judged. One class is where they judge your bunny by its looks, health, and weight, while the other class they judge you based on your knowledge of your bunny (In front of a large group of people because not a private NLA event.)

*Feedback: Information given to someone regarding the appropriateness of her behavior.

Feedback: Practically the “F-word” at NLA. You get in trouble for giving it without staff permission and you get in trouble for rejecting and/or questioning it. Sometimes you get in trouble for giving it with staff permission because said staff didn't like what you had to say, or a favored student got offended and thought it was invalid.)

*Five Minute Warning: A warning before every meal and activity so that the girls know that five minutes remain until they are to meet. It is a time to put away their things and tidy up the house.

Five Minute Warning: A warning given before meals and meetings so people know when to be in the living room. If you had a spot restriction outside of the living room, you had to stay there until the staff allowed you into the living room to meet. You couldn't be there too early or the world would explode.

*Five therapeutic focus areas: Areas of competency that girls work on in order to graduate. They are emotional regulation, healthy relationships, life skills, academics, and self development.

*Food Helper: A girl whose job is at school to help get lunch ready.

*Good Morning Girls: Inspirational quote read during breakfast.

Good Morning Girls: A cheesy inspirational or religious (Christian) quote a student reads before breakfast. It’s just as important to read when it's your turn or reply “good Morning “student name” as it is to hold hands during prayer. So if you don't reply, expect an LO or to be sent to the HHC.

*Grab Bag: Bag filled with privileges and rewards given to students who qualify through earning a high amount of room points.

Grab Bag: An “award system". Depending on what you pull out, it could be meaningless. One of the options is to choose a movie for movie night, but if the staff doesn't like the movie it’ll get thrown away and you won't be able to watch it. Other things are Activity Pick, $5 iTunes gift card (staff have to approve music), and dessert pick.

*Great Hall: Where meals are eaten and some other group activities occur; PE, art classes, and the like.

Great Hall: Where the houses meet to have meals. Everyone has their assigned seats which are with their own houses. "No cross house contamination". during my 15 months there, TW and SB had assigned seats together for 2 weeks (my first two weeks there). In the great hall there is a couch, but you must sit at the tables. It doesn't matter if you have crippling period cramps and need to lay down, “All the girls get them and they’re participating, You’re not the exception”.

*Grounding: A loss of off-campus activities due to poor behavior.

Grounding: You can get grounded for the dumbest reasons, but we’ll cover that here. When you’re grounded, you must sit at the silent table 24/7, do journaling assignments, do “reflections”, miss TV night, do therapeutic focus assignments, miss group activities, miss Shabbat (if applicable), and miss Store. While this is going on, you’re missing time to take care of your rabbit, do your weekend responsibilities, and the advisors treat you like you’ve committed a crime and talk to you like you’re 5 in a patronizing tone. Obviously grounding isn't going to be fun, but if it gets in the way of taking care of an animal assigned to you, I'd say it's a bit much.

*Group: A group counseling time that occurs thrice a week where girls talk about themselves emotionally and solve conflicts with others.

Group: A designated time with certain people three times a week. One day you do group requests with both home advisors (which is your whole house), another day you're with your advisor (2 advisors per house), and the last day you could be with any student from any house and the host could be an advisor, a therapist, or a certain staff member. On that day everyone meets in the SB living room for the weekly update (new student, staff leaving/coming, or past student visiting.

Group Requests: A form of confrontation done before everyone else, not in private. A group request is a piece of paper you fill out when someone does something that really bothers you. It’s not necessarily a bad way of resolving an issue. I think it could be a helpful addition to the community, but alas it's New Leaf, so it does nothing but cause drama. When given a group request, you’re not allowed to clarify what the student means, ask why it was you who was being requested (if a group was part of said incident), talk about your side of the story, or do anything but take accountability. Innocence doesn’t matter, you're taught everything is your fault. Better yet, you're not allowed to talk about them outside of group, so you can't half ass taking accountability and truly talk about it later, you have to have that uneasy energy between you and whoever it is who requested you.

*Happy Satchel: A pencil patch which holds a list of goals girls have accomplished.

Happy Satchel: A small pencil case you must bring to Group. It can only hold your “goals”, a pencil, group requests, and your charm necklace. If there’s anything else in there, it is deemed unnecessary and you get an LO. Fidgets are not allowed during group. I'd add a picture but.. I burned mine.. so..

*Healing Hearts Chair: An area where a student may be sent by an adult because of undesirable behavior, or a student may send herself there to slow down.

HHC: They say the Healing Hearts Chair is a chair you can go to when you’re feeling emotional and need to check in, but in reality it’s a chair that staff send you to when you break the rules or do something they don't like. You can sit there for as short as 3 minutes or as long as 30. You MAY NOT speak to or acknowledge anyone but staff when you’re sitting at the HHC, and you must wait there until a staff member gets you. If you get up because you need to pee or are looking for a staff member, you get an LO.

*Heavy Cleaning: Saturday cleaning that involves deep cleaning beyond regular chores.

*Honey Bunnies: The name of our 4-H club.

Hour's: A form of punishment where you’re given an hour of physical work. That can include cleaning someone's bathroom mess, staff member’s cars, scrubbing the great hall floors (sometimes with a toothbrush), or fixing up the garden that’s never used. It may not sound bad, but when you're grounded it becomes overwhelming. Especially when you have to do it outside of the scheduled time. You can get them for a multitude of reasons, you can find those reasons here.

*House Laundry: House items that are used during the day that need to be laundered.

House Laundry: The closest thing to house laundry there is is a basket in the cleaning closet for dirty rags from LOs, Hours, and Chores.

*House Parent: Staff who keep girls on track with what we’re supposed to be doing, and who stay in the home overnight to make sure we are safe.

House Parent: Going off NLA's handout definition, “To make sure we are safe” translates to “To check the rooms every 15 minutes to make sure we aren't planning on pulling a Shawshank.". The night staff were cool, but "house parents" were the day staff. Some were cool and some were not. Some got off on abusing the power they had over the students. The good ones there were ended up quitting for one reason or another.

*Jobs: Extra duties given to responsible girls who want to earn more money.

*Journal: A blank book given to a student at her first community meeting. The journal is used to record her growth, write goals, and complete writing assignments given to her by her therapist to help her with emotional progress.

Journal: A notebook you bring to group and community. The therapist rarely gives writing assignments. It’s the therapeutic advisors who give them out. Staff and Advisors could go through them whenever they wanted (the therapists could too, but they were all kind and had a reason to look through them).

*Journey Book: A Portfolio which holds girls' therapeutic work both written and artistic.

Journey Book: Never knew they collected that, but then again people who are pulled don't get what graduates get, so if the grads go it that could be why I've never heard of it (I was pulled).

*Kinship Calls: A privilege that can be earned which allows a student to talk alone with her parents and family members on a cell phone on specific days of the week.

Kinship calls: A privilege that can be earned which allows you to have monitored phone calls on the office phones to your parents and siblings. You can ask for kinship calls alone, but they have to really like you in order for you to get them. My therapist had to push for me to even get kinship calls to begin with. You can read more about Kinship calls here.

*Last Light: From 7:45-8 pm, a staff member reads everyone a book.

Late: Being late can range from being forgotten on the HHC causing you to miss a meeting to finishing up in the bathroom causing you to be one second late. They literally write down then and there who didn’t make it in on the dot. It doesn’t matter if you’re even one second after or if you step in exactly when they call out for the meeting, you’re still considered late.

*Laundry Head: The appointed student for each day to help her laundry mated to complete their laundry. This is a paid job that one earns.

(There is no laundry head, and you have to ask for “Downstairs Alone” in order for you to do your own laundry, otherwise it depends on the staff.)

Life Story: At some point, you must write your life story. From the moment you were born, to when you were sent to NLA. You must invite at least 12 people to listen to you read it, whether you're comfortable with that or not. It must involve every detail of your life, including all the traumatic shit you’ve been through, and shit that you did that got you sent here. Sure, you could lie and leave things out, but sooner or later they could find out and you'd get in trouble.

*Lights Out: The time for bedroom lights to be turned off for the night and for the girls to go to sleep.

Lights Out: There was no "lights out". There was My Time and Last light, where everything must be silent and for everyone to do their own thing. They make it sound like you're allowed to hang out in your room, but you're not. The rooms are for sleeping. If they hear you talking over the baby monitor or hanging out/stalling, you'll get in big trouble.

*Learning Opportunities: 30 minutes of work to learn from your mistakes. Learning opportunities are given by staff to students when students break rules or to help a student stay on track with her growth. 

LO's: “Learning opportunities” are a form of punishment where you’re given 30 minutes of physical work. Similar to hours, you do whatever the staff tell you to do. Most of the time they’re pointless. It's an ineffective way to help people “stay on track” and “Learn from their mistakes”.

LOA: A Letter Of Accountability is something you must start writing when you first get there. Your parents send you a letter as to why you’re there, and you must respond in a way that only says “you’re right, I’m sorry”. Again, the context of your behavior doesn't matter. You can’t say “I have an attitude with ____ when (s)he comes over because (s)he assaulted me.”. It doesn’t matter how valid your explanation is, in the end everything is your fault.

Lost And Found: A basket that your stuff is put in if you forgot it on the table the night before, or if you leave your book out to go to the bathroom. Even if you have permission to have something out, “other staff don’t know that”, so it goes in the lost and found. It must stay there till the end of the week until they go over whats in the basket in a meeting, no earlier.

*Meds: Short for medication, or the time in which medication is dispensed.

Meds: Short for medication. You must recite what you take, how much you take, and why you take it for the whole house to hear. For Example; "I take 150mg of Lithium Carbonate for mood".

*Milestones: Community celebrations of individual girls’ accomplishments when they have met a certain criteria.

Minor: A minor is the school version of an LO. Where you get LO's at the house and do them when they're scheduled, minors are "earned" at school and they're done during recess.

Move in Buddy: A Move in Buddy is when someone gets assigned to help a new student settle in. They help you with things like your orientation binder, learning the rules, and assisting you in anything and everything.

My Time: My Time is a 30 minute period between 7:15 and 7:45 where people have to be in the common areas with all the things they will need until bed. It's a time to be silent and do your own thing. If you forgot something in your room you'll either get an LO and be able to get it or have to live without it (depending on staff).

*Objectives: Weekly goals that girls set which are related to their work on the five therapeutic focus areas.

*Off Campus Activity: Outings planned by adults, mostly for Saturdays and Sundays.

Off Campus Activity: Like skiing. Again, you have to participate or you get an LO. It’d be “inconvenient” for a staff to stay behind with you while the others got to ski.

Orientation: You’re immediately on orientation when you first get there. The way to get off Orientation is to turn in your “orientation binder”, be there for at least one month, and you must have been on your best behavior because you have to ask for “Off Orientation” on a Treatment Request. Some people get off at 1 month, others at 5 (even if they’ve finished the binder and have been good, it still depends on how much the main staff like you).

*Personals: The students’ “snack food” that they may buy at Store from earning money from room points.

Personals: Personals are snacks and candy you buy from the store on Sunday or that your parents send you. If there’s too much, you HAVE to share it with the house. It doesn’t matter if it’s your grandmother's cookies or if it’s authentic food from your home country, you can't save it somewhere else for later, you must share it. You eat only what the packaging says a serving is. If it’s something like homemade cookies, you may have 2. Everything must fit in your box, otherwise you have to share it or throw it out depending on what it is. If it's packaged food from store, you throw it away. If it's something sent to you from home or family, you must share. If you throw it away you could get an LO for being rude. (Other times you catch staff eating it in the office).

*Privileges: Special rights given to students who demonstrate responsible behavior Examples- Walking around the weekend stores alone, going back to one’s room without permission, cosmetics, study hall in your bedroom.

Quest: Quest is a week long wilderness experience certain students have to go on. Not all students have to go. I went to TRAILS NC before NLA, and I still had to go (as did a few other TRAILS kids). There was a certain day that they told you to never talk about when you got back. I dont know why, it's really not that big of a deal. It's the final day, and they make you spread out (out of view from each other) and sit in silence for 8 hours. At some point your given a letter from your parents, but that's about it.

Refusing: If you’re anxious and unable to go to class, you get an LO for refusing to attend. If you get a group request and say you don’t know what they’re talking about, you get an LO for refusing to answer. Whenever you’re unable to do something they want you to do in that very moment, it counts as refusing

Restriction: There are many kinds of restrictions, but being restricted to a person is different. You can’t talk to them or you get grounded. You can’t talk about them, help them, or even look at them or you get an LO. Most times, if anything happens between you and the student you’re restricted to, you’re put on therapeutic focus. It doesn’t matter if the staff placed you two on the same team, you must pretend the other is nonexistent. For example, me and my restriction were placed on the same raft for the rafting trip (Thanks, Susan), and the teacher wasn't able to get her in the boat and a level 3 rapid was coming up. The teacher asked for help, so I got my restriction up all on my own. Susan saw and gave me an LO for breaking restriction. .... Did you want a lawsuit??

*Room Checks: Evaluation by staff of rooms three times a day to make sure they are neat.

*Room head: A responsible student who helps girls keep their room tidy and makes sure the rules are not broken.

(No such thing)

*Room Points: The points earned by fulfilling a room check.

Room Points: Every day the staff check your room 3 times. If your room is spotless, you get 20 points. If there’s a sock on the floor and the staff can’t figure out whose it is, everyone in the room loses their points. If someone takes accountability (rare), then only they lose their points.

*Sagebrush: Sagebrush, or SB is the name of one of the houses on campus (Westside).

*Scholar: Earning a 3.5 GPA or above. The scholar receives a certificate and a charm.

*Self-asses: When one evaluates herself.

*Shut Down: Behavior that involves a closing up and unwillingness to listen to feedback from staff or students.

Shut Down: A panic attack counts as shutting down. They just call it a shut down to give you an LO for it. A student had a panic attack at night and a therapist had to come in. She ended up getting put in therapeutic focus for "causing a disturbance".

Silent Table: A table you sit at to be silent. If you sit at the silent table, you must stay silent. If you talk, you get an LO. The staff practically set you up though, the silent table is back to back with the couch to the living room, so you can see everything going on and it’s so easy for someone to turn around and talk to you. Some people sit at it willingly so they can focus on getting their homework done, but most of the time you’re told to sit there or have a spot restriction there.

*Snack Girls: Students who earn the job of getting snack ready, dispensing, and cleanup.

SOAR: I forget what it stands for, but its a designated amount of time on Sundays to get your homework done. If you don't have anything to work on during that time, you'll read until it's over.

Spot Restriction: A spot restriction is where your therapeutic advisor tells you to sit in a certain spot, and you can’t get up without raising your hand and being called. Usually, if you want something, you go to the office window and wait to be summoned into the office, but in this case you must raise your hand and hope another student lets the staff know you need them. A lot of the time they can't see you at your spot from where they are in the office. (depending on staff, students would get in trouble for helping the kid on the spot restriction. Wether they claimed it wasn't the student's job to let staff know or if the kid on the restriction needed to be more patient, the student who told staff would sometimes get in trouble).

*Staff Shopping: Continuing to inappropriately ask a question of staff after staff until getting the desired answer.

Staff Shopping: This is also somehow applicable for when you’re confused with homework (or confused in general and need help), they think you want a staff to give you the answer instead of getting a different response than "Think about it". If a kid has a question, answer it. Don't be a dick and respond with a question. Another thing considered as staff shopping was when a staff was busy and you needed something. I had asked a staff to bring me to the bunny barn and they said "In a minute". I asked twice, and decided to ask someone else once it got to 20 minutes. I got in trouble with the original staff I asked because apparently I wasnt patient enough. Girlie I had to take out my rabbit and it was almost dinner, I wasn't allowed to do it after dinner. Because of this, Bandit (my bunny) wasn't marked as taken out on the bunny sheet.

*Staying present: Staying in the moment rather than projecting into the future.

*Store run: Trip to the store for girls who earn their points Store location is chosen by student recommendation.

Store Run: Store run is when you go to store on Sundays. Just another example of what they choose to share with parents and how they choose to word it. Location is chosen by staff 9/10 times.

*Student aid: A student chosen by teachers to write down homework and to sometimes give help to other students.

*Tantrum: A wild outburst of rage

*Therapeutic Advisors: Staff who help us with our problems, correspond with families, and lead groups.

Therapeutic Advisors: There are two TA's in each house, they're basically like the head staff. You are set up with one for your entire stay. They have the final say. It doesn’t matter what your therapist has to say about anything, it only matters what the therapeutic advisor thinks. You share everything with your therapist, but your therapeutic advisor doesn't have to listen. My TA set people up and didn't listen to anything therapists had to say. They're not there to help the students, they're there for a power trip.

Therapeutic Focus: As it says in the packet, “you are placed on therapeutic focus to help you focus on having healthy relationships and to increase your awareness about what you do or do not have control over”. During your free time you must sit at the silent table or at the computer to write out your assignments. I was put on therapeutic focus 31 times, and at some point my advisor literally told me to start making up my own assignments to show them to get approved. The average amount of assignments students receive during their time at NLA are 2-3, but again, it varies depending on how much the staff like you.

Therapy Talk: When on Kinship Calls, you can’t talk about anything negative, sad, frustrating (like a journaling program or the fact that you got an LO for not lying to parents on tour) or related to therapy. If you do, you get an LO. All kinship calls are monitored in the office, they listen in and make sure what you’re talking about is appropriate. If your family member swears or talks about something that makes it seem like you’re “being negative” (whatever that means), you get an LO for “Therapy Talk”.

Third Person Restriction: A third person restriction is where you must have 1 other person in the conversation in order to talk to someone, and the third person can't be someone on orientation. There was a staff (S****) who would sometimes make me have 2 other people in the conversation if I was talking to someone on orientation, in that case I don’t know why it’s called third person when there’s got to be four, but you shouldn’t question it. You’ll get an LO. It's disrespectful to question an adult.

*Tools: Ways one can help herself get through a situation that is emotionally or physically tough for her.

Touching Restriction: It’s in the name, no touching whatsoever. Someone’s sad and needs a hug? LO. You’re sad and need a hug? LO. Someone fell, so you gave them a hand? LO. You literally trip and bump into someone? LO. Someone hugs you without your say so? LO- you get it.

Treatment Request: A short form you fill out when you want a “privilege”. You must state the privilege you want, why you want it, certain objectives you’ve recently completed, and certain objectives you’re currently working on. You’re only considered if you have at least 280 points that week. They’re able to be turned down with bullshit reasoning. You can see what the form looks like here.

*Triggered: Being reminded of past behaviors or a bad experience by something happening in the present.

Triggered: Similar to the real world, the word "triggered" is thrown around and has lost its value. You can get in trouble for either how you react (aka how you're triggered), or if you trigger someone else, aka the sound of shuffling cards is annoying, so some student says its triggering so a staff member makes you stop. Again, everything depends on how much a staff member likes you, so if I said yoga was triggering because it's related to a way I got assaulted in the past they would tell me to suck it up, but if a well liked student told a staff member I was shuffling cards too loud and that it's "triggering", I'd be told to stop or get an LO.

*Tumbleweed: Eastside addition of the residential facility at Rock Mesa Campus.