Our History & Episcopal Identity
Ours is a young, vibrant, and rapidly growing endeavor—with grassroots beginnings and ambitious goals. Incorporated in 2009, the School of Los Angeles began by providing tuition-free after-school programs that offered playful, project-based learning in the STEM fields. In 2012 SLA opened its doors to twenty-eight full-time students in the Middle School. Since then our community has expanded to include over 170 students in grades six through twelve, and our school has developed a broad and vibrant curriculum. SLA has proudly graduated six senior classes to many of the best colleges and universities across the country and the world.
The school has already evolved through many phases, but there has always been a core identity. If the after-school programs served as the seeds of our enterprise—with their focus on broad access, experiential study, and the most forward-thinking pedagogical practices—the soil in which they germinated was the centuries-old tradition of Episcopal education, with its emphasis on community-building, social justice, and critical thinking.
What does it mean to say we are an Episcopal school? Whether you’ve attended Episcopal schools your whole life or you’ve never even heard the word “Episcopal,” it’s important to understand how this tradition shapes our lives together at SLA. We’ve tried to sum it up in one phrase:
“A generous faith in a beloved community, expecting joy and pursuing reason and wonder for the sake of the world.”
A Generous Faith
By design, we are an Episcopal school with a pluralistic community. People from other religions? Yes! People with no religion? Yes! People from every walk of life? Yes! We are careful not to narrow the paths that others are called to walk and we are respectful in the way we share our faith. As part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church expresses a big tent Christianity and its schools provide a ministry of education that is inclusive of all people.
A Beloved Community
In the tradition of what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the beloved community, we affirm that there is something divine about crossing the social boundaries that humans have constructed. Practicing genuine hospitality within a diverse community widens our vision of what a just society could look like; it invites us to welcome and make room for one another and our differences. It also deepens our awareness of how to walk the path of justice with both conviction and compassion.
Expecting Joy
We believe that students flourish when they feel known and that they are a part of something larger than themselves. Along with our work in the classroom, our shared life on campus is marked by communal lunches, music, school traditions, feasts, and twice-weekly chapel services that create the ties that draw us together in a culture of joy. We cannot manufacture joy, but we can expect that in showing up daily for one another, joy will follow.
Pursuing Reason and Wonder
The Episcopal intellectual tradition is known for loving the questions as much as the answers. Episcopal schools are places where students can chase down their own big questions; where the process of sharpening your thinking doesn’t dull your imagination. We invite our students to ask “Who am I?” and “What am I doing here?” Being formed in the habits of reason and wonder enables our students to cultivate a rich inner life that will sustain them well beyond their years in school.
For the Sake of the World
As an Episcopal school, we educate students to live ethical lives in a world that needs healing. This is largely counter-cultural work, and it begins with discerning how to build right relationships with our neighbor, whether they are in our school or across the world. We believe that it is not when we get more (stuff, knowledge, money, experiences) but when we give more that we discover the deepest truths about ourselves and the life we’ve been given.