Youth Leadership Institute

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What makes a leader? Are leaders born or can leadership be revealed? Send your students to FEA’s Youth Leadership Institute this fall and discover how these students can positively affect their community!

This exciting leadership opportunity is offered by the folks at the Foundation for Educational Administration, the premiere provider for quality professional development in education.

The expectations for the students when they return to their communities are what make this program unlike any other Youth Leadership experience.

See the difference youth leadership can make in your community!

Youth Leadership for Tomorrow Today — where leadership is seen as a process…not a position

Executive Summary

The Foundation for Educational Administration (FEA) will establish a centralized Youth Leadership Institute to serve as a statewide base for creating and delivering student leadership activities. The Institute will create a core youth leadership curriculum as a guide for all schools, emphasizing civics, place-based education, social and emotional learning, globalization, environmental sustainability, and school-community engagement.

FEA has defined youth leadership as “using one’s voice for the greater good.” This definition is based upon a set of core assumptions about leadership, including the belief that all students can learn leadership skills and participate in leadership opportunities in their schools and communities. FEA believes that in order to assist schools in cultivating the kind of leaders who will be needed tomorrow today, schools must create opportunities where youth can learn the skills, attitudes and knowledge that are necessary to understand the transformations of this century and to reflect on these implications. A corollary belief is that good leaders not only create knowledge, but also create situations in which others can do the same.

The ultimate goal of the Institute is to create a leadership program that enhances youth’s interaction with their school and community. The program will provide individuals with opportunities to develop the skills, ethics and values conducive to effective citizenship. By investing in leadership training, and exposing students to a strong sense of shared values and social engagement, youth will become ever more fluent in social capital. The Institute will emphasize that high social capital enhances academic success.

The Institute will depart from traditional programs that identify students who are “natural leaders”. The curriculum will be responsive to those students who are not normally selected for a leadership program. Leadership activities will be structured in a way that will emphasize experiential leaning and provide opportunities for genuine leadership while embodying high expectations and respect for the youth in attendance. The design of the curriculum will expect students to demonstrate and practice the skills, knowledge and disposition of leaders as they practice place-based problem solving in their communities.

FEA believes that leadership involves doing, not just thinking. Working from that belief, the implementation of this initiative will be provided through multi-day conferences for youth, technical assistance for schools and leaders, and training for advisors and mentors. The activities will focus on the interpersonal skills and competencies that must be learned through experience and practice, and through the assessment of successes and failures.

In the final analysis, young people can only learn the skills, knowledge and dispositions of leadership if they are allowed to exercise that leadership in meaningful ways. By exploring the question, “How do I best prepare myself to lead?”, youth will engage in powerful lessons designed to begin lifelong reflection on one’s role as an ethical and intelligent leader in a challenging, global society.

Criteria

This exciting opportunity will take place on October 17-19, 2008 at Camp Bernie in Hunterdon County for NJ students.

The goal of this program is to create a leadership experience for NJ youth of varied backgrounds that enhances leadership service, encourages education, and promotes career and professional development. Training will be provided for teachers/mentors prior to the program in September Teachers/mentors who attend will receive professional development hours.

The leadership experience will be delivered in an environment that is safe and supportive with a focus on interaction and engagement, all hallmarks of a quality youth program.

Selection criteria used in selecting students for this program should include:

• Be a NJ HS freshman, sophomore or junior in the 2008-2009 school year
• Interest in developing leadership potential or show demonstrated leadership potential.
• Diversity is one of the essential characteristics in a learning experience in which participants learn from one another. To achieve that goal, we seek a group that reflects diverse backgrounds and/or experiences.
• Must be in good academic standing and have no attendance or major disciplinary problems in school.
• School counselors, teachers, principals and parents must approve of students’ participation.

Each team of between 3-5 students from your school has to have a teacher/mentor. The teacher/mentors’ responsibilities include: (PD hours given)

• Attending a pre-conference workshop in September at NJPSA
• Brainstorming possible project activities upon return from conference
• Attending the multi-day leadership conference in October with the students
• Attending adult sessions during October conference
• Supporting/coaching/mentoring student-led projects upon return

Contact

Chuck Stein, 609.860.1200

Sharon McCarthy 732.714.7688

For more information and directions to Camp Bernie: http://www.campbernieymca.org/

Project Possibilities

• Start a monthly “X” group.
• Organize a community garden
• Organize and oversee a youth mentoring program
• Gather and create podcasts of community’s stories
• Speak or host a monthly brown bag lunch series at the local library
• Start a new tradition
• Organize an indoor community “game day” /“game tournament”
• Organize an outdoor community “game day”/tournament
• Create/enhance Freshman transition program
• Convince local authorities to improve “X”
• Organize an “adopt an elder” program
• Organize an art exhibit by local artists
• Gather favorite recipes from the community, post on school’s website
• Get local businesses to donate funds for “X”
• Bake one of the communities’ favorite recipes with donated supplies and have a distribution event
• Host a community timeline event
• Recognize and honor those community members who “make a difference” in your school/community
• Organize tutoring services, using senior citizens (among others) within the community
• Organize a “Get Out the Vote” event
• Attend and participate in various town groups – town council, chamber of commerce, etc.

This is a short list of possibilities. Students and their mentors can use one of these for their project or can create their own.

Increasing social capital within your community is the guiding principle with which all the above projects have in mind. Therefore, projects are encouraged to include as many different stakeholders of a community as possible.

A note on social capital – research suggests many robust correlations between vibrant social networks and outcomes like better school performance, lower crime rates, better public health and reduced political corruption to cite a few. It appears that social capital leads to a natural “accountability”.