Longmore Academy teachers and support staff use the Sanctuary Model to guide the creation of a safe, nonviolent environment for our students and the staff who care for them.  The Sanctuary Model helps maintain a therapeutic community that promotes safety and non-violence as the basis for everything we do to help students heal.  The Sanctuary Model is a way of guiding everyone in the school:  leaders, teachers, teacher aides, administrative assistants, children, and families to share in the same values and language.

We call our shared values the Seven Commitments. 

We are committed to:

1. Nonviolence: Being safe outside (physically), inside (emotionally), with others (socially) to do the right thing.
2. Emotional Intelligence: Managing feelings so that we don’t hurt ourselves/others.
3. Social Learning: Respecting and sharing the ideas of our teams.
4. Shared Governance: Shared decision making.
5. Open Communication: Saying what we mean and not being mean when we say it.
6. Social Responsibility: Cooperating so that, together, we accomplish more.  Everyone contributes to the organizational culture.
7. Growth and Change: Creating hope for our students and ourselves.

Longmore Academy embraces the Sanctuary Model that helps many people heal from trauma and the impact of chronic stress in their lives. The Sanctuary Model parallels many bullying prevention programs in that it strives to develop a community of nonviolence. 

S.E.L.F.

Four concepts guide how we work and how children heal and make progress in their lives.

1. Safety: Physical, psychological, social, moral
2. Emotions: Managing feelings without becoming self/other destructive
3. Loss: Feeling grief, coping with loss, and preparing for change
4. Future: Re-establishing the capacity for choice