Luisa Alanis, M.A., Ed.S.
Luisa Alanis, M.A. ,Ed.S. is a school-based School Psychologist with extensive training and experience servicing monolingual and bilingual Latino children and families in the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD). She has spent 13 years working with students and families in a high-poverty, urban school with a high percentage of English Language Learners. During this tenure, she has collaborated in the design, training, and implementation of policies and practices to better serve linguistically and culturally diverse students. Topics focused on social emotional skills, inclusion, instructional supports, collaboration between families and school, PBIS, systematic tiers of supports, and special education evaluations. She is passionate about advocating for social justice.
Alanis has collaborated in planning, developing, and implementing school-wide inclusive systems change efforts. Furthermore, she has consulted and trained other district staff to improve their inclusive practices. She has been a member of the SDUSD School Psychology Governance Team and has been invited to participate in subcommittees to make recommendations to the SDUSD School Psychology department. These subcommittees have included work-around piloting tools for assessing linguistically diverse students and utilizing Pattern of Strength and Weakness for Specific Learning Disability identification.
Alanis has supervised bilingual School Psychology graduate students throughout the
years and has been a guest lecturer at SDSU in the school psychology graduate program
and California State University San Marcos in the Mild/
During her time in graduate school, she participated in a grant where she gained strategies and techniques for interdisciplinary collaboration with speech-language pathologists and teachers, which now serves her well in her practice. Her presentations include topics to develop and improve strategies for collaborative relationships for serving bilingual populations.