Introducing the Legacy Academy: The Educational Hub at Project Legacy
Project Legacy’s work with at-risk youth populations is full-spectrum. From balancing budgets to mental health help, we mean to empower our youth in every aspect of their lives - that includes education. As we enter this fall and a school year marked by COVID-19 precautions, that commitment is more important than ever.
Enter Legacy Academy, the umbrella program under which all of Project Legacy’s academic endeavors will operate.
The first program under this umbrella, our longstanding study tables with staff and volunteers, will continue as they have for years now. This program pairs participants with trusted tutors from multiple disciplines. People who have been professionals in writing, teaching, and science turn up week after week to help our youth navigate their way through algebra equations and history essays.
Tied to the study tables program is our Young Writers Workshop and Speaker’s Forum, led by writer Bryan Lund and supplemented by civic leaders. This program emphasizes the power of good writing in all aspects of life, from thank-you notes to poetry, from college entrance essays to mock-news articles. The Speaker’s Forum portion of this program puts our youth in contact with people they can look up to and learn from: in the past year our group of young women has played host to legislators, educators, and other community anchors. This helps our students grow comfortable talking to people in powerful positions, and also ensures those powerful people come face to face with the youth we serve.
Last spring, many of our youth expressed difficulty with online learning, whether due to faulty tech, inconsistent home environments, or even just paying attention to a screen for so many hours. Unfortunately, these struggles were reflected in GPAs. Knowing our youth are facing a new semester of online learning, our team has worked through the last part of summer to create our newest program: Project Legacy 6-12 Scholars Project.
The 6-12 Scholars Project, or, ‘learning pod’ program generated a bit of media buzz earlier this year, and for good reason. As schools transform their delivery online, families of means have been hiring private tutors and teachers to work with their kids on homework. On its face, this may seem like an educational luxury, but the experience and GPAs of our youths last spring tell us otherwise. We don’t believe access to money should determine one’s access to education, so we’ve created our own pod. This pod will provide tutors and licensed teachers to our students in the Empowerment Center. We will strive to keep them engaged, punctual, and learning.
Finally, Legacy Scholars is our program for post-high school participants. This program is made possible due to a grant for multi-campus collaboration between RCTC and WSU-R. This program will support 25 at-risk first-generation college students, with a goal of 90% retention through graduation.
If you would like to support any of The Legacy Academy’s efforts, we are accepting donations to help provide necessities to our youth, in addition to recruiting volunteer educators and teachers with a history working with students healing from complex trauma.