Laurelbrook’s vocational training program is based on the admonition of Ellen White (Education, p. 13) that schools should train the physical, mental, and spiritual powers equally well. But often when the physical powers are being trained, the mental and the spiritual powers are engaged as well. Helping a staff member lay tile on a kitchen floor calls for precise cutting and finishing, work involving both physical labor and mental agility. Making bread reminds a student that each ingredient, the amount of each ingredient, and each step’s timing can all be equally important, a vital mental and spiritual principle as well.

If a young person makes it a point to learn all that he/she can learn, four years (or even one year) in Laurelbrook’s vocational training program can fit her/him with habits of punctuality, thoroughness, and courtesy that will help her/him in her/his career after high school. More and more articles lamenting the lack of these attitudes and skills continue to appear in prominent U.S. newspapers and magazines nationwide.

Each Laurelbrook student is asked to spend six weeks or half of the summer during the summer months helping with the agriculture, medical, and building programs. During this time, he/she gets an opportunity to experience life as it could be without classes, daytime activities, or other distractions. It is also a time for staff members to get to know the students and teach them needed habits of industry and thrift and precision. For foreign students, it is also a time to polish up their English or begin to learn a new language.

This summer Laurelbrook’s vocational program encompasses a wide variety of activities, including gardening (planting, cultivating, and harvesting), CNA work in the nursing home, washing and folding clothes in the nursing home laundry, cleaning rooms as a member of the nursing home housekeeping staff, helping rebuild a sewer sand filter with precision, moving household goods in and out of staff homes or apartments, grounds keeping (mowing, trimming, clearing), building construction and maintenance (laying tile and carpet, erecting beams for a new roof on the classroom building, and painting houses and apartments), and manufacturing (pallets, in this case). In a few cases, those 16 and older may find themselves a junior firefighter in Laurelbrook’s fire company (a unit of the county fire department) learning the professional techniques of putting out a fire quickly and efficiently without hurting themselves.

As students and staff members work together, they gain a closeness through common experience that helps the students as they tackle mental or spiritual challenges. Training all facets of the brain helps all parts to function better.