CIMARRON, NM – As week two of Leadership Academy was wrapping up, Logan Echard (Pennsylvania Dutch Council), Brenna Leary (Baltimore Area Council), Keenan Shields (Seneca Waterways Council), and Mr. Doug Cunningham (Seneca Waterways Council) had to say their goodbyes and travel to Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. Echard, Leary, Shields, and Cunningham arrived there to lead a conference titled “Building YouthLed Units.” The main vision of this conference was to teach a group of adults how to help youth gain new skills by developing a stronger sense of youth leadership, and enabling the learning process of the youth as they are encouraged to lead. “Empowering youth is important in allowing them [the youth] to fully learn and grow. Youth learn by actually doing, as well as teaching others,” states Echard on the importance of Youth Led units.
“I think this [the youth-led concept] is important because youth-led units are strong and fun and help the BSA grow, which is sorely needed,” shares Mr. Cunningham. “Our vision was to enable adults to step back and let the youth run their own units. That doesn’t mean [the adults] do nothing, but it does mean to mentor the youth to accomplish what they want, not what the adults want.”
Echard, Leary and Shields taught a group of 18 adults who ranged from being Assistant Scoutmasters to Council Training Chairs. Echard states how the diversity of their team and their “different skill sets helped in their learning process and in the development of the program and their knowledge throughout the week.”
“Topics included living the patrol method, and how adults can best partner with youth to create successful youth-led units,” shares Leary. The class given involved a mix of teaching and problem solving, encouraging the participation of the attendees and meeting the needs they expressed. “We reevaluated the needs of the group each night and changed what we taught the next day to meet their needs, which is why I think the course was a huge success,” Echard shared. “They [the adults] were all very intelligent and invested in the content,” says Leary. “We decided to go in depth in all the sessions. They had a good idea about all the topics in a general sense, so we pushed them to think about the new content in new ways and form new perspectives.”
As with any course given, challenges are faced. As part of teaching how to build youthled units, Echard, Leary and Shields, all of them being youth, were the ones to give this class and model to the adults why having youth-led units would be beneficial to their troops, councils, and other groups of youth they were leading within the BSA. “The main challenge was for the adults to buy into being taught by youth. Most thought they were coming to be taught by other adults, but they quickly realized the youth [Echard, Leary and Shields] would be teaching the course,” shares Echard.
“I don’t think that the BSA training teaches adults how to let youth lead,” shares Mr. Cunningham. “Scoutmaster Specific and Wood Badge [trainings] don’t. I have been floating this idea with many national people in my head for almost a decade, so when Gary Schroeder (Week 7 – Conference Chair) had to run a week at the PTC (Philmont Training Center), he let us try and fill the gap.”
As Echard and Leary had shared, though, the course was molded to meet the needs of the adults constantly. This resulted in the success of the program, leaving the adults with the enthusiasm to continue to learn about what they had just been taught. “We closed the week by having the attendees create a commitment ceremony and had the commitment at the now closed Rocky Mountain Scout Camp, the former location for the National Junior Leader Instructor Course (NJLIC). The ‘Building Youth-Led Units’ attendees are now ready to change lives,” shares Echard.
The NJLIC was the predecessor course to the NYLT Leadership Academy course, which is held at Camp William B. Snyder in Haymarket, Virginia. The course will also be held at Camp Beaumont in St. Louis, Missouri for the first time in 2015.
Hopefully, more youth and adults will be inspired by the great work Logan Echard, Brenna Leary, and Keenan Shields have put in to help these adults gain greater skills within youth-led content. We also hope Mr. Schroeder and Mr. Cunningham’s beliefs in this method of youth development will spread and help to empower the leaders of tomorrow, as well as the new beliefs of the adults that have been impacted by this course. Our youth are changing the world, and now that the adults will be there to help and encourage them, the world will be a better place.
