Frenship ISD Hosts Center for Adolescent Resiliency at Annual Leadership Summit

Human Development and Family Studies staff teach students effective teamwork and leadership skills

On Nov. 9, Texas Tech University 's Center for Adolescent Resiliency (CAR) and United Future Leaders (UFL) staff joined Frenship ISD at the Gifted and Talented (GT) Leadership Summit for 5th grade students. The annual leadership summit hosts guests like CAR to teach students effective teamwork and leadership skills.

The United Future Leaders (UFL) program director, Gloria Gonzales, describes the opportunity as one of great collaboration.

"The Frenship ISD GT Leadership Summit is always a presentation highlight in our year and this year was no different," Gloria said. "It is always great to collaborate with other youth practitioners as we seek to continually grow young leaders in our community."

Within the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, CAR works with its programs to provide a nurturing and safe environment for students during transitions between elementary, middle school, and high school. Programs like United Future Leaders provide community support through activities and events like the leadership summit so that these young students are better equipped to be productive leaders.

"Determining the leadership style of these young leaders is always a fun and relevant topic," Gloria said. "It helps to provide an explanation for why they prefer to lead in a certain way and how their style differs from others."

Frenship ISD Director of Entrepreneurship & Innovation and HDFS alumnus, Keith Patrick, explains that each year the summit operates under a content theme, with this year's theme being structures.

"We try to give them some focused leadership training to help understand what leadership looks like in action and how different leaders operate," Keith said. "The Center for Adolescent Resiliency provided fantastic leadership styles training, students always love their Lion King presentation and really identify with the different types of leadership styles they learn about."

As an alumnus of the HDFS program and an advisory board member for HDFS, Keith looks forward to this event each year. Keith describes the summit as a great opportunity for kids to learn about what leadership style they most identify with. Students work together to complete hands-on leadership activities like scavenger hunts, structure engineering, and even obstacle activities.