At the School of Los Angeles, we abide one simple truth: The best educational tool for any young person is the collaboration and camaraderie of peers from different backgrounds—peers who have stories and perspectives to share, the stuff of life that simply cannot be gleaned from a textbook. And the best approach to learning is through direct, sustained, and genuine connection to real-world experiences. 

Rather than simply hand students the formulae and principles of Newtonian mechanics, we ask them to build and launch rockets—to derive and test those formulae through experiment and reflection. Rather than simply hand students written accounts of current social phenomena, we ask them to enter the field, observe, and pursue inquiry-based learning.

SLA is not the private school up on the hill, and our students do not learn inside a bubble. A truly exceptional, transformative education requires a diverse environment grounded in hands-on learning. It gives students access to entire worlds and worldviews they might never otherwise encounter. It opens their hearts and minds to the contexts, concerns, and joys of others—knowledge that will forever shape their convictions and actions in life.

Our students have always embraced the City of Los Angeles as their classroom. They have organized direct outreach to our unhoused neighbors in Hollywood. They have lived at the mission on Skid Row. They have conducted site-specific lab work to study the ecology of the L.A. River, and have interrogated the relationship between river revitalization efforts and urban development. They have grappled with the ethics of artificial intelligence. They have marched and participated in mass direct actions downtown in support of climate justice and other student-led social movements. They have studied the prison-industrial complex with formerly incarcerated activists and scholars. They have studied US immigration policy on both sides of the southern border, supporting the families of DREAMers and undocumented veterans. They have founded and sustained our Feminist Club and our Gender and Sexual Diversity Association. They perform plays and musicals at venues in Hollywood’s historic Theatre Row, just blocks from our campus. They engage in the vibrant cultural life of the city, exploring its many neighborhoods and participating in the intellectual and aesthetic lives of its people.