With sadness and a sense of loss, I write to inform you that Tom Bratter died late Friday night August 3, 2012. Tom had been fighting the odds of his deteriorating heart and diabetes for twenty years. His most recent open heart surgery was an attempt at one more medical miracle sixteen days before he died. Having started the John Dewey Academy in 1985, Tom spent a very fruitful life proving that when treated with caring confrontation that maintains high expectations, lost adolescents can turn around their lives.
Tom was born in New York May 18, 1939. He received a BA from Columbia College in 1962, two Masters Degrees and an Ed.D. in Counseling Psychology from Teachers College of Columbia University. He did postgraduate work at the New York Center for Mental Health and received an "Addiction Specialist Certificate." In 1974 he wrote his dissertation on group psychotherapy and the use of confrontation with alienated adolescent drug abusers.
Before starting the John Dewey Academy in 1985, in addition to an active private practice, Tom was the Director of numerous programs in Westchester County, including City Island Methadone Clinic, Village Project for Youth, CAGE Prevention Project, Mount Vernon Youth Board, and East View Neighborhood Center. He also served as a consultant around the world including programs in Italy and Canada as well as with police departments in NY and Florida, several high schools and community based programs including the Port Chester Citizens Anti-Poverty Association and the Urban League of Westchester. He has been on the faculty at Harvard University, Columbia University, Union Institute, and College of New Rochelle and on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Humanistic Education and Development, Journal of Counseling and Development, Journal of Reality Therapy, Journal of Mental Health Counseling, Journal for Specialists in Group Work, and The Addiction Therapist. He also wrote four books, several hundred articles, and delivered papers at over one hundred conferences and workshops.
As an expert in Reality Therapy, Group Work, Addiction, and general Psychotherapy, Tom Bratter had focused for over half a century on alienated, unmotivated, self-destructive adolescents. His passionate commitment was to approach lost adolescents with the respect of direct honesty and high expectations, rather than with what he considered the demeaning approach of labeling with a mental illness diagnosis and medicating with psychotropic drugs that can be as addictive and destructive as the street drugs against which he had waged war. Through his "larger than life" presence (and scatological language) he could not be ignored, and there are many that have cubby-holed him as bellicose, harsh, alienating, and obnoxious. That, like any simple summary of Tom, is too easy. Tom believed in the need of different perspectives and disagreement - as he said "being in the struggle together." And no matter what people thought of him, no one involved in helping youth should lose sight of the important voice he contributed to the dialogue and an alternative paradigm to the medical model in dealing with the struggles of adolescence.
Our thoughts go out to his entire family, and especially his wife Carole, and his two children Edward and Barbara, all of whom have been involved with John Dewey, and have had to share Tom with us more than they probably would have wanted. His presence will certainly be missed, but we at the Academy are committed to keeping his dream alive.
John Dewey Academyis a year-round college preparatory therapeutic boarding school for troubled teens ages 15 -21. JDA utilizes peer-based approach that leads students to high levels of achievement and inspires them to develop in ways that promote self-respect, maturity, and respect for others.
~Comments~
Dear Ken,
We met years ago when I chaired John Dewey Academy's initial accreditation on behalf of the NEASC. I just learned of Tom Bratter's passing earlier this month and wanted you and all at JDA to know how saddened I am by the news.
Tom was a memorable man, in terms of his life-changing contributions to hundreds of kids and also in terms of his style. To be sure, he and I engaged in a few heated disagreements over the years where we both remained stubbornly glued to our respective positions, but I always trusted the depth of his commitment to the best in kids. It struck me that some of his harshest critics were those educators who had either never worked with the kids he sought to help at JDA or had been unsuccessful in their efforts to do so. (Some of us long-timers at Hyde are not unfamiliar with that criticism.) Tom seemed to know that the only measuring stick that mattered to him was the quality of the future lives of those he taught. And in those terms, as we say in Maine, "He done good."
My lasting memory of Tom from my brief immersion in life at JDA was a session with the whole school facilitated by Tom. A girl had spent a week or so with you on her trial period and it was time for her to make her case to stay and also time for her peers to weigh in on how they felt about her remaining in their number as JDA students. While I had heard all sorts of things about JDA prior to my visit, that session convinced me that Tom was for real, that JDA was for real. It was a no-holds-barred encounter. The comments made to the girl by both Tom and the students were frank, perhaps blunt, but stopped short of being cruel. At the end of it all, Tom turned to the girl, grinned, and simply said, "Yeah… you're one of our kids." She smiled but said nothing.
On behalf of everyone at Hyde, please know that my thoughts are with Tom's family, you, and everyone at JDA.
