Beatty Profile: From Therapeutic Boarding School to Galloway

One of Galloway’s most beloved coaches, Denney Beatty, has worked with Galloway for 17 years and has proven to be an unforgettable figure in the Galloway community. If you’ve taken Beatty’s Kinetic Wellness class, you’ve heard the stories he still vividly recounts from his time before Galloway, and after meeting with him I was able to get the full picture on Galloway’s best coach. 

Beatty comes from a family of teachers, so helping individuals has always been a part of his life and something he’s felt passionate about. When talking, he expressed how he didn’t necessarily wish to teach at first, henceforth the therapeutic route found him. In school, his concentration was therapy (where he earned a Certified Therapeutic Recreation Specialist certification) while getting an undergrad in recreation. In the mid-90s therapeutic boarding schools were prevalent and on the rise, especially with the delinquents, and after interning at Gwinnett County Hospital in the psychiatric setting, he found himself immersed in the therapeutic environment. Beatty stated, “I guess it gave me my foundation as a professional, but also as just the person I am today by being there.” 

Life working in a boarding school seems to never have a dull moment. The average day for the first 6 years of his life there consisted of multi-hour long therapy sessions but also spending 80% of their time outdoors exploring the wilderness and connecting with nature. Beatty still expresses his fondness for the place, “I still remember my first week there and thought, man, this is it, you know, we’re in 193 acres of the wilderness.” Personally, I am thankful for Beatty’s strong affection towards the outdoors. I remember my freshman year in KW, we were able to leave the building and just walk the Chastain. It is so refreshing being able to leave the dull classroom for an hour in the middle of the day. After his position as a licensed therapist, he moved up to the coordinator position where he trained incoming therapists all the while working in the athletics department throughout his years, which comes as a surprise to no one! While boarding school may seem different, Beatty expressed the similarities as his prior school still offered athletics, dances, student governing bodies, meetings for different substance abuses, and even different religious groups and offerings, “I wouldn’t change it. It was a lot of work. It was hard. Scary at times, but it was in my 20s, so I had all this energy and this passion.”

I asked Beatty how his prior school compared to Galloway, because, if you think about it, the culture-shock must have been insane. At Galloway, he stated, “We have so many freedoms, you have choices, and you even have choices on how you learn,” which, compared to the boarding school, was the opposite. At his previous school, freedom was regulated. From uniforms to no choice in where and when they ate, to when they had therapy, whether they could go on field trips, their world was restricted. But that was what they needed. The change from boarding school to Galloway was stated as a necessity, “I knew I wanted something different. I didn’t know it was going to be Galloway until I made my first call to Galloway and came to campus and had my first interview, then I knew the moment I was there, I’m ready for a change.” When asked about the drastic change, Beatty shared, “I remember one experience, I had a student [at Galloway] that needed to go to the nurse and my first thought was, how do I get them to the nurse? Because we [therapeutic school] radioed and we had an escort for students everywhere you went.” Not only were the rules different, but academia is too. He segued from an emotional growth curriculum (ex. Ericsson’s Stages of Development) to an academic curriculum. But this didn’t necessarily mean changing his way of teaching at his core. I asked Beatty if he brought insights from the boarding school to Galloway, and he confirmed, stating that lots of the therapeutic components in his teachings today were subconscious and automatic in a sense. 

We all know Beatty as a teacher, but many also know him as a beloved coach. To stir up the pot, I asked what some of his favorite sports to coach and classes to teach are. Surprisingly, at least to me, he enjoys being involved in Middle Learning, which he even stated he was hesitant about at first. The ML Nutritional class is enjoyable because of the energy in the room with the older middle schoolers, but the ML basketball court is a place he cherishes as well. In regards to UL, cross country is favored because of the school calendar year. He stated how spirits are always higher at the beginning of the year compared to track and field, when everyone has lost that momentum. But, for you track and field athletes, he loves you guys too as he states growth is much more visible in the track and field area, and more teaching is necessary compared to cross country. 

As a send off, I asked two last questions: for one piece of mental health advice and, of course, his quote of the day. For the mental health aspect: “‘Don’t take it for granted. You have to be intentional about your mental health. I think we do an excellent job of understanding what we need to do physically in terms of exercises. What I don't know is that we’re intentional about incorporating or paying attention to our mental health.’” Wise words from a wise man! And finally,  “‘Seek joy. It's not going to come to you.’”