Social Emotional Learning

For many of our students, Prentice is the first school where they have ever felt truly safe. Safe to struggle. Safe to ask for help. Safe to be exactly who they are. That sense of safety is not accidental; it is built deliberately into every part of our program. Social-emotional learning at Prentice is a core class, taught weekly by an our licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, because we understand something that research confirms: a child who is dysregulated cannot learn. Before a student can grow academically, they need to feel emotionally grounded. That is where we start.

Every Prentice elementary student builds a personal regulation toolbox, a personalized set of strategies, from deep breathing to movement breaks to quiet drawing, that they can access independently when big emotions arise. They learn to identify what they are feeling, and choose a positive response. They leave Prentice not just with stronger reading and writing skills, but with an emotional vocabulary, a growth mindset, and a fundamentally different relationship with themselves.