Back in 2009, the Congregations Organizing for Renewal, a grassroots community organization, claimed students were falling into the cracks at Logan. Many complaining parents, student groups, and the School Board collaborated on an idea: a school within a school.
House 3 Principal, Alicia Elbert, and many other teachers did two years of research on how their pilot school will be. They visited charter schools, other schools within a school, and New Tech High School in Napa. The result is the Institute of Community Leaders (ICL) program.
“There’s a lot of bright kids in Logan who don’t have anybody to hang out with. Sometimes they need a little bit more motivation or cohesion,” said Erin Cross, a Life Skills teacher for ICL students. “We’re trying to make a community field where [students] feel like they have a home.”
ICL has many activities that help accomplish this goal; there are tutoring classes for struggling students, field trips to local colleges, and Exhibition Night which shows off the impressive work of ICL students.
One of the interesting features of ICL is that every student in the program has the same classes and teachers in one area: the 200s. One perk is that ICL teachers can communicate with a student who is falling in the cracks.
“We meet regularly and talk with other ICL teachers about students, so if a student is bombing out or borderline failing in some classes, we talk about support systems and how to help them,” Cross said.
One of the students who benefitted from this community cohesion is Prachi Kumar, a junior at Logan. Through her experience in the program, she easily made friends.
“People are really nice, and teachers are very supportive,” Kumar said.
ICL has experienced many changes over the years. Teachers have come and gone. Programs and classes have been initiated, modified, and in some cases fallen by the wayside. However, the central mission remains, even with the challenges and limitations.
“We want to be able to support students, but at the same time, we have to work within the constraints of Logan’s school structure,” ICL principal Elbert said.
An example of this is students who strive for athletic scholarships. Unfortunately, the ICL curriculum has to give a course of Athletic P.E which the program doesn’t normally do. Students, however, have shown great improvements in their academics in ICL.
“On average, ICL students start freshman year with a GPA that is .4 points lower than non-Logan students. In ICL, we have far more students who have increased their GPA than outside of ICL,” Elbert said.
Students have many reasons why they want to go to ICL, according to the instructors. Sometimes the students join because they like the leadership aspect. For others, social justice work is a motivational factor. Sometimes it may just be because of friends that are there. No matter what the reason is, ICL is meant to guide students on their path to any 4-year college and beyond. This is accomplished through constant teacher-to-teacher communication about students.
“The teachers are leaders. They want us to become leaders,” Kumar said.
