Community Leadership Program
(Community High School, West Chicago)
The Community Leadership Program is an elective course to help students in
grades 10-12 become effective citizens. The focus question for this course,
“What is an effective citizen in a global community,” allows students to apply
the knowledge gained from Social Studies courses to real life. Students learn
leadership skills, identify local and global areas of need, plan solutions and
take action.
Through participation in this program, students volunteer at a community
organization for 60 hours a semester. To participate, students:
- Choose an area of service that interests them with approval from the instructor
- Serve a local, non-profit organization or institution
- Receive no payment for service
- Complete at least 15 hours of service for each progress report marking period
- Keep a journal of their experience
- Research a problem/issue associated with their area of service and produce a final report
- Engage in seminars with community leaders to explore central questions of the program
The entire class also chooses a class service project to work on in
addition to their individual, local project. The class service project engages
the entire student body with the community leadership students applying their
leadership skills learned in class. They plan lessons and activities related to
the class project for implementation in the advisory periods.
Click to view Exemplar 3 >>