Many students faced confusion regarding their ILP placement this year. SLA’s ILP program is a program that allows sophomore and junior students to go out into the world and pursue their interests outside of the classroom for two hours a week. Students can have internships, take classes, and take part in various projects. The purpose of ILPs is to get students out into the world to pursue their own individual interests, based on the thinking that high school is real life. Many SLA students were not placed in ILPs at the beginning of the school year. SLA students can find their individual ILPs on there own, or have SLA place them in one. This year there was some confusion regarding ILP placement with certain students.
Sophomore Nebil Ibrahim tried to get an ILP at the academy of Natural Sciences, but he had trouble getting information on the application process, and simply submitting his application.
Sophomore Naomi Fecher-Davis didn’t have an ILP until recently. “Jeremy told me two weeks ago that I might have an ILP,” Many sophomores and juniors were not placed into ILPs at the start of the year, and some are still uncertain about them.
In the past SLa has hosted an “ILP Fair” which is an exposition showcasing possible ILPs to SLA students. The fair usually takes place towards the end of the year. There was no ILP fair in 2013, which made it more difficult for students to find out about ILP opportunities.
“The reason we didn’t have an ILP fair was that in the past students haven’t used it productively,” said SLA ILP coordinator Jeremy Spry.
Placing SLA’s sophomores and juniors can be difficult. SLA tries to match each student with an ILP that relates to their individual interests. Many students are interested in working at law firms, or having medical internships. These are difficult for high school students to get, especially because many of these places don’t take interns younger than 16 or 18.
There is also a lack of available ILPs. Some medical ILPs won’t take SLA students because they didn’t work out in the past. Because of the economy there are less ILP opportunities at certain places. SLA wants to expose students to these opportunities, but doing so poses challenges to both students and teachers.