Get Ready for New Guides, Peer Support Tools, Age Differentiated Features and More!
As school leaders prepare for a new year, the pressure to support students while balancing limited time and resources is higher than ever. At Alongside, our mission is to make that easier for you, your staff, and the students you serve.
With a 90% helpfulness rating from students last year – and even higher from educators – we’re proud of the impact Alongside is already making. But we also know the work is never done. That’s why we’ve built even more tools to help districts promote well-being, increase engagement, and make early support safe and scalable.
Here’s what’s new this year:
- New Guides to Match Students’ Mood and Personality
- Kudos: Peer Encouragement Without Social Media Risk
- Kiwi Coins: Motivation to Practice Real-Life Skills
- Smarter Design for High Schoolers
- Revamped & Differentiated Daily Check-Ins
- Clearer Goal Setting, Now Linked with Superpowers
- Universal Screening Now Available
New this year, students can now choose between three distinct guides, each with a different personality style:
- Nova – a clear, practical, no-nonsense leopard
- Jinx – a playful, light-hearted, unexpected meerkat
- Kiwi – a warm, understanding, and supportive llama
All three guides deliver the same skill-building content focused on helping students take one small action to improve their well-being. The difference? Students feel seen, heard, and more likely to return. We soft launched this feature in the spring and students are already reporting positive feedback from their chats with Nova and Jinx.
“I liked the extra help and ideas Jinx added. Allowing me to set helpful goals.” -- High school student
Want to try chatting with Jinx, Nova or Kiwi?
Create your free demo account today!
Why it matters for districts
When students are given choice and autonomy, engagement increases, especially among harder-to-reach populations. These unique guides boost retention and make skill-building feel personalized and relevant, without increasing the load on staff.
Alongside’s new Kudos feature lets students send and receive anonymous “high fives” to and from peers at their school. No messages, no comments – just simple, safe encouragement.
- Anonymous usernames (changeable anytime)
- No direct communication or identification
- Designed to build community and normalize help-seeking behavior
Why it matters for districts
This is a low-risk way to promote positive culture and social connection — critical protective factors for mental health — while avoiding the pitfalls of traditional social media platforms.
Behavior change takes effort, especially for students struggling with stress or executive function. That’s where Kiwi Coins come in: students earn coins for journaling, creating goals, completing habits, and giving kudos to others. Once they earn coins, they can use them to personalize Kiwi with playful accessories.
Why it matters for districts
We’re not trying to “gamify mental health”, we’re reinforcing healthy habits and helping students follow through. It’s a scalable, research-informed way to motivate students to take action toward their goals.
We’ve updated our interface to “grow” with the user. While Kiwi the llama remains a core part of our experience, the visual design now adapts more clearly for high school students. This fall, secondary students will notice a more streamlined home screen that defaults to dark mode (though any user can easily customize this in settings!), and also experience feature updates such as a habit tracker instead of mood tracker.
Why it matters for districts
You’ll get a more professional interface for staff and a more cohesive implementation experience across the district.
Our daily mood tracker has been differentiated for older versus younger students and revamped to provide a more meaningful behavioral development experience, rooted in clinical best practices.
For younger students, the daily check-in is now a Mood Tracker that allows students to not only track their mood at a specific time each day, but also provides psycho-education to help them better understand emotions and notice how their own feelings relate to things happening in their environment.
For older students, the check-in feature is a Habit Tracker, which allows students to track habits that impact their wellbeing such as sleep, exercise and healthy eating. Students can schedule a daily alert to remind them to track their habits if they like.
Why it matters for districts
By giving students developmentally appropriate tools to recognize emotions and track well-being habits, districts can support emotional literacy, promote self-regulation, and generate valuable insights to guide Tier 1 support without adding to staff workload.
We’ve deepened the connection between students’ in-chat goals and our Superpowers, which are personalized, proactive exercises for skill-building. It’s all now integrated in one intuitive dashboard for the student.
Why it matters for districts
This gives students more ownership over their progress and gives educators a clearer view of how students are applying behavioral skills in their daily lives.
After successful pilots last year, Alongside now offers optional universal mental health screening and SEL assessments as a supplement to our core platform. These screeners are:
- Evidence-based and developmentally aligned
- Typically completed once annually
- Designed to help districts proactively identify students who may need support
Why it matters for districts
This gives your team a scalable tool to meet state mandates, inform MTSS/RTI decisions, and reach students early, without overburdening staff.
Let’s Support More Students, Together
These updates are built to help you do what you do best: support students with the right tools, at the right time, in a way that fits your existing systems and goals.
🎯 Want to try it out? Set up a demo account
📅 Ready to learn more? Book time with our team
With so much uncertainty heading into the 2025-26 school year, Alongside is an affordable and sustainable support system that can be there for all of your students and staff any time they need it.
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