National Youth Leadership Training 2009 - A Leader's Perspective

By Loretta Chosa, NYLC Youth Advisory Council Member and NYLT Staff

Each year the National Youth Leadership Council sponsors a weeklong training in the Midwest that fosters leadership and service-learning skills in high school students from around the country and across the globe.

The idea of 70 youth out in the middle of the woods with no idea who anyone is or what they are doing there sounds like it just wouldn’t work. However, at the National Youth Leadership Training youth learn to trust one another, to form new friendships, and to help lead — with the larger goal of addressing the achievement gap.

Over its more than 25-year history, NYLT has touched the lives of youth all over the world. This year NYLT was a remarkable experience.

This is the fourth year I have been involved in the training, having been both a participant and an assistant group leader in past years. We drew students from all over the U.S. and a few students from Ghana, so we had a tremendous diversity in race, culture, and gender which helped make the impact of the training that much more effective. I learned so much this year about different cultures, people around me, and myself.

The achievement gap was the focus of the training this year, in addition to leadership skills development. The achievement gap is an observed disparity on a number of educational measures between the performance of groups of students, especially groups defined by gender, race/ethnicity, ability, and socioeconomic status.

Through an experiential learning simulation called “Community Solution Investigation” we helped youth discover what the achievement gap is and how to recognize it in their home communities. We also offered workshops, seminars and service-learning experiences that helped illustrate different ways to use service-learning to close the achievement gap. A number of participants plan to tutor or develop education awareness campaigns as a follow-up to the experience.

I learned so many different ways to approach the issue just listening to the discussions. The NYLTers were so devoted and motivated; watching them brainstorm was inspiring.

Youth go through a huge transformation from the beginning of NYLT to the end. So many break out of their shells and blossom into strong leaders. Seeing the quiet kids who first try and stay away from the group taking stands and sharing their visions, and seeing the strong outgoing types step back and help the group in different ways is amazing to me.

If participants can leave the leadership training and go back to their communities with a positive understanding of service-learning and leadership, knowing that they can use that to help lessen the achievement gap back home, that is remarkable. I can’t wait to see what they’ll do to change the world.