Law and Leadership / Law and Leadership Academy Introduction

Law and Leadership

Law and Leadership Academy

The Law and Leadership (L&L) Academy is a small learning community (SLC) based on the Highs Schools that Work model. Formerly known as the Public Policy and Justice (PP&J) Academy, the name of the academy has been adjusted to Law and Leadership to better reflect the Career Technical Education (CTE) pathway curriculum offered to the student. Students with an interest in law and leadership are encouraged to register for this academy. The core content teachers (math, English, science, and social studies) work within a close net setting with shared students, common planning times, and classrooms located next to each other. This arrangement of the faculty allows closer monitoring of our students in a collaborative, informed and unified environment. Through interdisciplinary team-planning, public policy and justice issues are integrated into the core classes to make the teaching of math, social studies, science, and English more current to the interest of the students.

Outside of the core classes, sophomore students are required to take public policy and justice electives in one of the two public policy and justice pathways: law or government. The two pathways (law and government) are focused on students learning the content and applying law and government theories to field studies/trips, career shadowing, projects/presentations, community internships and service opportunities. A teacher-coaching instructional model is used to empower the students to take ownership of their public policy and justice learning experiences, to help nurture them into becoming self-directed learners, and to better prepare them for a post-secondary education.

Students will also have the opportunity to take school-wide elective classes and be part of other programs. They can selective classes outside of the academy in Advance Placement (AP), Arts, Accelerated Math, JROTC, business, communications, yearbook, nursing, dual-enrollment, and extra-curricular activities with students from the other three SLC/Academies within Grady. Senior students will explore a post-secondary degree field within law or government by completing a summative project consisting of a research paper, internship or project with a community mentor within their post-secondary field of interest. Advance Placement (AP) and dual-enrollment courses will be offered to students throughout their sophomore, junior and senior years to further help assist them in deciding upon their post-secondary pathways.