We love sharing all of our strategies for social emotional health here on our blog. But it’s also important for us to share exactly how we use these strategies every day in our work with kids.

At Momentous Institute, we serve more than 7,000 kids each year - in our Therapeutic Services program, parent education, and our laboratory elementary school serving students age three through fifth grade. Every day we infuse our strategies for social emotional health into our interactions with kids and their families.

We’re going to take you on a tour of our school over the next couple of weeks here on our blog. We want to show you what it looks like to operate a school where social emotional health is woven in with rigorous academics.

Before we start, here’s a little about our school to give you some context.

We are located in the Oak Cliff neighborhood of Dallas, Texas. Our students, 248 of them, predominately live within a couple of miles from the school. Our student population is 94% Latino/Hispanic, and 87% qualify for free or reduced lunch. 

Here’s what we know: a focus on social emotional health in concert with rigorous acadmics works. In fact, we believe that strong social emotional health precedes academic success. When our students leave us after fifth grade, they go on to any number of middle schools and high schools in the city. And we track them. Seven years after leaving us, 98% of our students graduate from high school. 82% then enroll in higher education. We believe that social emotional health makes all the difference.