Join the movement.
The Girls Athletic Leadership School Los Angeles (GALS LA) provides a rigorous, college-preparatory curriculum for middle school girls.
OUR VISION
GALS LA takes a holistic stance to development that recognizes the deep connection between a healthy mind and a healthy body. Through the integration of a health and wellness curriculum addressing the physical, emotional, and psychosocial needs of female adolescents, GALS LA helps students to emerge as leaders of their own lives. The young women at GALS LA have the ability to pursue their strengths and passions, and to understand their responsibility to the local and global community.
The Girls Athletic Leadership School Los Angeles envisions a world where all young women, regardless of their background, have the opportunity to access the skills, knowledge, and self-determination to succeed in secondary school, college, their communities, and the world.
WHY MOVEMENT?
At GALS LA, we know the impact of physical activity on academics. Beyond the joy, energy, and confidence our students gain from movement, research demonstrates that daily exercise improves memory, attention, and cognition. Sports participation also boosts self-esteem and civic engagement. Movement prepares our students to live long, fulfilled lives.
Our movement pedagogy is based on a growing body of scientific evidence indicating a positive correlation between physical activity, cognition, social-emotional awareness, and neuro-developmental growth. By infusing movement throughout the school day, we emphasize the importance of holistic, kinesthetic, mind-body awareness and its positive effect on social, emotional, and academic success. We engage our bodies in service to our brains.
We back our beliefs by measuring students' performance and growth in movement and holding them accountable for their participation in this mission (self-efficacy surveys, grading rubrics, heart rate monitoring, goal setting, mile time graphs, pacing group evaluation and reflections, and wellness studies in GALS Series.)
WHY ALL GIRLS?
Single-gender schools have been shown to have a strong positive impact on the student outcomes in a variety of ways. According to the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools, an organization which studies the impact of girls’ schools, students in all girls’ schools report higher self-esteem and self-efficacy over their coed peers. Additionally, students in all girls’ schools are more likely to pursue both STEM opportunities and leadership positions than their coed peers.
Middle school is a time of fast-paced physical, social, and emotional development. A single-gender school provides a unique environment for students to learn about and experience this development with their peers in a safe and comfortable space with students who share their experiences.
To learn more, visit the National Coalition of Girls’ Schools.
“I love being a GALS student because I feel important and strong and smart!”
OUR COMMITMENT
GALS LA is committed to preparing a distinct and diverse generation of learned and motivated women for innovative leadership in our developing global society. GALS serves an enormous diversity of students – Those from privilege and most at-risk; those of all learning levels and styles; and those with varying relationships to the world of health and wellness, movement and athletics. What bonds us is sisterhood. GALS ensures that our students fully participate in the leadership force of the future.
GALS students participate in a dissection lab in science class.