See. Develop. Inspire.

While May is Mental Health Awareness month, KIPP LA invests in the social-emotional development and mental health of students all year round, including our LGBTQ+ students. We believe that all students can succeed if given the right opportunities and support.

Throughout the month of March, students at KIPP Corazón Academy in South Gate have been discussing gender identity and the role of gender in navigating today's systems as a way of celebrating international women's history month.

Families at KIPP Promesa Prep in Boyle Heights fundraised to expand their KIPPsters’ classroom libraries. To celebrate influential women who have contributed to the Women’s Rights Movement of their time, each KPP classroom was able to purchase racially-inclusive books about Selena, Sonia Sotomayor, Michelle Obama, Malala Yousafzai, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sojourner Truth, Venus & Serena Williams, or Celia Cruz.

On Tuesday, January 8 KIPP LA rolled out the red carpet (literally) to celebrate the opening of two new, permanent school campuses - KIPP Comienza Community Prep in Huntington Park and KIPP Corazón Academy in South Gate. KIPP Academy of Innovation will also be opening a new campus in the coming weeks.

Students at KIPP Empower Academy in South Los Angeles recently completed an art unit created by their teacher, Jessica Armstrong, called “Dreamland.” During this unit, second and third-grade students learned about one-point perspective and incorporated techniques of overlapping, size, detail, and color by imagining and creating their own Dreamlands. Read on for more details, tips from Ms. Armstrong, and a sampling of student Dreamlands.

On December 1st, 15 fourth- and fifth-grade students from KIPP Corazón Academy (KCA) went to UCLA to participate in "We Declare: A Youth Summit." More than 300 students from schools around the city participated in the event, which was also attended by UCLA professors, education students, and other teachers from around Los Angeles. KCA students were the youngest in attendance, as every other participating school was a high school. 

October is National Bullying Prevention Month, founded in 2006 by PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center. This year, schools across the KIPP LA region participated in various activities provided by PACER to show love and honor for their fellow KIPPsters. Read on for more details.

On Friday, October 12 more than thirty professionals of industries ranging from the NFL, restaurants, music, and entertainment to nonprofit, architecture, medicine, business, and law joined KIPP Academy of Opportunity (KAO) middle school students in the revamped KIPP LA Guest Teacher Program. Read on for more details.

Over the past year, the Mental Health & Support Services team at KIPP LA Public Schools developed a new suicide prevention and awareness lesson called “We Support Each Other!” The lesson was implemented in seventh and eighth-grade middle school classrooms during September, which is National Suicide Prevention Awareness month. Managing Director of Student Services, Kim Dammann, explained that the decision to create a lesson in-house “stems from quality control. We want to have control over the instruction that our students have. It’s about doing what’s right for our students.”

As part of the program “Authors to KIPP LA” (A to K^LA), national best-selling author, political commentator, and social justice advocate Julissa Arce joined the eighth-grade students of KIPP Sol Academy in East Los Angeles for a presentation, Q&A, and book signing of her new YA memoir Someone Like Me: How One Undocumented Girl Fought for Her American Dream. In the book, Julissa shares her secret life as an undocumented Mexican immigrant in Texas, and her ability to overcome challenges associated with her status to eventually become a successful vice president at Goldman Sachs. Read on for more details.