Unique Four-Year Leadership Development Program

We offer one of the country’s first comprehensive four-year Leadership Program for high school students. Many schools provide some leadership training, either implicitly or explicitly, but only for selected students. At LPS, the Program is for all students.

Not all LPS students are expected to be charismatic outgoing leaders. But each will identify and develop his leadership style, and all will find ways to improve the lives of others with the skills they have learned. The Leadership Program is focused on four key Leadership Outcomes: critical thinking, communication, personal responsibility, and social responsibility.

The Leadership Program spans the entire four years of our curriculum and includes two full years of leadership class work and two years of project-based work. The first year focuses on personal leadership, the second on leadership within the school, the third year on leadership in the community and the fourth on how the student will make a difference in the world. Leadership lessons are integrated across the curriculum. Student retreats, service learning projects, speaker series, and school-based opportunities for exercising leadership are offered throughout the year. These opportunities include serving as community service "ambassadors", and forming their own clubs and athletic teams.

By the time a student graduates from an LPS school, he or she will have acquired the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are necessary to exercise leadership effectively. These include, among other things, facilitating a meeting, developing an agreed action plan, resolving conflicts amicably, and communicating across different points of view and backgrounds. The Program integrates under the "leadership" rubric many areas that have traditionally been challenges for our target student population. These include: self-esteem and self-confidence, habits of personal responsibility, integration into the broader school community, civics, a sense of their place in this world, and the belief that they have the power to make a difference.