Meeting Our Community’s Socio-Emotional Needs

At ALA, we are not just concerned about grades and academic success. We strongly believe in addressing the social and emotional needs of our students and their families in an effort to aid them in being happy, healthy, and productive.

In an effort to achieve this, we are implementing two school-wide initiatives:

1. RULER is an evidence-based approach or integrating social and emotional learning into schools. RULER teaches the skills of emotional intelligence — those associated with recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating emotion. We began implementing this program last year with our staff and students. This year we will invite our students’ families to come and learn these skills with us.

2. Restorative Practice is a method of strengthening relationships between individuals, as well as social connections within communities. It will offer opportunities for our students and their families to create an even stronger community at our school. It also creates space for students to make amends to their community if they’ve made a questionable choice. It is fundamentally meant to teach our students how to build - and repair when needed - their important connections with others.