Overview

                The Youth Leader Corps has evolved into two distinct but interrelated phases in promoting the development of leadership skills for upper middle and high school students. The first phase is, leadership during the summer sports camp, is particularly important for middle school club member who will be moving into high school the following year. This phase involves leadership orientation and training followed by youth leadership during a sport camp. The camp runs for 12 days over a three-week period. During this time, the youth leaders are responsible for organizing sport activities and conducting one-hour lessons that focus on the responsibility goals stated earlier. They are paired with an adult staff member who helps them plan lessons and provide feedback and any needed support. The summer phase has typically used basketball as the activity to teach the younger campers. The youth leaders are assigned to a home group- a small group of young campers. Leaders teach and provide practice for a specific basketball skill. They reinforce one or more the goals that are stated below. After teaching the lesson, they lead a reflection session to discuss how the campers did on the sport skills and responsibility goal(s). Each group rotates to another station and the youth leader teaches the same lesson to a new group of campers.

Thee second phase is leadership during the school year. During this phase, youth leaders continue to assume a leadership role by running their own Sports Club one-day a week during the entire school year. Their responsibilities mirror those from the first phase. The main difference is that this phase only involves high school youth leaders, picked up from there respective schools, who spend three hours on a school night planning, teaches, and reflected on their teaching experiences. In addition, these youth leaders typically have more exposure to the college community during the school year, as compared to the summer camp experience.

Goals of Project Effort and The Youth Leader Corps

Ø     Self-control and respect for others

Ø     Effort

Ø     Self-direction and goal setting

Ø     Caring for others

Ø     Applying these goals outside the gym