Program Design
Our Impact - 24/25 Program Year
Meals Served
Students Served
Outreach Program Hours
Empowering The Next Generation
At Girls First, we provide a safe and stable environment where students practice respect for self and others, exercise appropriate interactions with peers and adults, discover new skills and talents, and develop tools that will allow them to achieve greater success in school and beyond.
Our Approach
Our Programs Are Designed to Help Students:
Feel Supported & Secure
While building positive relationships
Learn New Skills
Social, emotional, academic, and creative
Build their confidence
Regulation, efficacy, empathy, and agency
Break Cycles of Adversity
By increasing resilience and perseverance
Arts As A Vehicle
Arts are a vehicle by which we teach our students life skills and coping techniques. Students who have access to the arts have better academic results, workforce opportunities, and more civic engagement. Our curriculum provides interventions for students who experience overwhelming feelings of stress, anxiety, and anger, delivered in a universally beneficial way
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Trauma-Informed Approach
At Girls First, our trauma-informed approach is central to everything we do.
Our proprietary artsee© curriculum draws upon evidence-based methodologies including the Neurosequential Model in Education, the BuildaBridge Safe Spaces Classroom Model, and the Pillars of Trauma-Informed Care. This integrated approach creates a psychologically and physically safe environment where students can develop essential skills under the guidance of specially trained teaching artists.
While not every student we serve has experienced trauma, our trauma-informed approach benefits ALL children by creating a foundation for social-emotional learning that supports diverse learning styles and needs.
Ensure Safety
Build Trust
Provide Choices
Foster Collaboration
Nurture Empowerment
Through principles of safety, connection, regulation, and adaptive responses, we help students develop resilience and perseverance while cultivating empathy, agency, and efficacy.
Through our trauma-informed approach, we provide a holistic environment where students receive consistent support, creative outlets for expression, and the skills they need to navigate challenges effectively. This creates both immediate benefits and long-term tools for success in school and beyond.
Our Curriculum
An SEL curriculum for arts-based social and emotional explorations
About Artsee
Artsee is a four year, arts-based curriculum focused on building resilience while cultivating regulation, agency, self efficacy, and empathy. The curriculum is designed for delivery to children in first through fourth grades.
45 minute lessons are formatted in a structure that provides predictability and consistency while following the natural organization of the brain. Creative explorations are used as metaphors to practice and develop social, emotional, and academic skills and interpersonal interactions. It is encouraged that students be given opportunities to apply skills practiced in class to real life situations throughout other portions of the program or school time.
The curriculum features a heavy emphasis on celebration and invites family members, friends, and community members to participate in recognizing the accomplishments of students.
All lessons were designed to be led by experienced teaching artists, but an initial 20 hour training in Artsee’s specific teaching methodology is required with ongoing support for teaching artists provided.
