Logan School for Creative Learning

The Logan School for Creative Learning is a private school in Denver, Colorado enrolling intellectually gifted students in grades K through 8. The school focuses on experiential learning as a learning method.

It was started in 1989 as "The Denver School" by Patricia McKinnell, one of the school's teachers and its current Dean of Students. Originally it was located in a garage. Since 1999 Logan has been located on Lowry Air Force Base, where it is one of several independent schools on a 1,866-acre former military site that is being redeveloped as a mixed-use urban community.

The mission of the school is "a school for gifted education which provides a challenging environment for gifted children ages four through fourteen."

Andrew Slater, the head of school, was the recipient of an NAIS/E.E. Ford Fellowship for Aspiring School Heads, a one-year long program of leadership development for "emerging independent school leaders" supported by the National Association of Independent Schools and the Edward E. Ford Foundation.

Curriculum
Logan's curriculum is designed for intellectually gifted students ages four to fourteen. Students are selected for admission based on test scores, a student visit, and teacher recommendations. Each student has an individualized curriculum based on their abilities, learning style, and personal interests. At the beginning of each school year, students each choose a unit to study (some older students choose more than one), with students encouraged to pick a unit subject that interests them, as they will spend a large portion of their time at school studying their units. The curriculum of units is designed to help teach reading, writing, math, science and other subjects, by helping students build connections between these subjects and their interests. Field trips are an important part of the program, often with an environmental emphasis.

Logan School has 12 core classrooms including students of varying ages, usually within 2 years of each other. Children typically spend 2 years with one teacher, Logan students call their teachers by their first names.

During the 1998-1999 school year, students in one class at Logan participated in a research project investigating the usability of perspectives-based software collaborative learning, as part of their studies of acid mine drainage from old gold mines in Colorado.



Recognition
Some Logan students received an award from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for their work.

Capital campaign and construction program
During the school year of 2005-2006, The Logan School for Creative Learning conducted The Logan Legacy Campaign, a fundraiser that raised over $5 million to fund the school's expansion. The project was spearheaded by Head of School Andrew Slater.

Before the construction, the school only used half of the main building, leaving the rest unfinished. This area was called the Unoccupied Space. After the expansion, the Unoccupied Space was renovated and classrooms were put into the entire school, which now resembles a square horseshoe on the first level and a square on the second. Behind the West side of the school is a large berm and beyond that is a wetlands area. This is a favored place to conduct environmental studies and to enjoy nature.