NLU Spring15Mag

NLU Alumni Magazine

One Intense and EPIC Week By Nicholas A. Love

Early this year, high school students were able to experience a slice of life as a teacher at the National Louis University Chicago campus, or as one student put it, they were able to enjoy “a truly awesome profession.” The students in question were from EPIC Academy, a public charter high school in the South Chicago neighborhood of Chicago. EPIC was founded by veterans of urban education, with a perspective that one of the major challenges teenagers face in underserved communities is a lack of belief in their own ability to achieve. At EPIC, students are dared to imagine as much as they are prepared to succeed. This desire, to both inspire and prepare, is behind the Enrichment Intensives provided through EPIC. These weeklong learning opportunities allow students to experience the responsibilities and challenges managed by working professionals, and open students to career possibilities they might not have otherwise considered.

of the oldest schools of education, has partnered on an Enrichment Intensive to introduce EPIC Academy high school students to the awesome profession of teaching. The majority of EPIC students agree that, at the end of an Enrichment Intensive, they feel more confident about their success in the career field they were able to experience. According to NLU alumnus Matthew King ’07, M.Ed. in Administration and Supervision, Principal at EPIC Academy, this confidence blooms because students get to interact with professionals on their own turf. “When a student has put all this work into a presentation and it goes well – maybe not perfectly, but it goes well – students get a chance to sit back and really see themselves as accomplishing something, and something in the role of a professional, not just as a student.” This professional accomplishment gives EPIC Academy students an edge and a drive that they might not otherwise have, coming from communities with a low rate of successful college experience.

EPIC students do not have to just imagine what it looks like to be a successful teacher, or learn about the education profession secondhand. With the past Enrichment Intensives, hosted at NLU, these students were able to live the teaching life. “This experience made me feel like a real teacher, which has been a dream of mine since I was a little girl.”

This is the second year that NLU, one

“Thank you for sharing your stories about why you chose to become a teacher. You’ve made me look into being a math teacher in the future.”

- EPIC Academy Student, Enrichment Intensive at NLU