LTI Summer Session

On June 29, 2009 members of the LTI family made preparations for HSSP (a condensed version of the spring curriculum for middle school students for the summer). As usual, the meeting consisted of icebreakers, a major activity, and a discussion in the end on how to be a good leader.

The overall focus for this meeting was to highlight the qualities of a good mentor. In our icebreaker, the group split into teams of two. Each team then made an outline a one of their team-members body on the chalkboard. Then everyone drew physical feature to symbolize qualities for a good leader. So for example, one group drew a big head to represent open-mindedness in a good leader.

In addition to showing what skills a good mentor should have, the mentors were put to the test in "extreme mentor." In this activity, each mentor pretended to give a lesson while the rest of the LTI staff pretended to be disruptive students. While this was an extreme case scenario, I felt that this was a very informative. This activity showed each mentor how important it was to get everyone involved, what resources they had available to them, and how important it was to never give up.

After Extreme mentor, we had a discussion to further illustrate how important being a good mentor was. I felt that the discussion was very useful in that it showed how the skill that we highlighted in the icebreaker and the lessons that we learned in extreme mentor were all necessary to becoming not only good leaders, but mentors that can really make a difference.

An Overview of LTI Closing Ceremony 2009:

On May 10, 2009 LTI had its annual closing ceremony, with the featured event being the student’s presentations on their final projects. However, before the students presented on their projects, family, friends and LTI staff first got acquainted with one another over lunch at the Stata Center. Additionally, alumni from last year's LTI program also participated in the ceremony.

After lunch, the presentations took place in room 123 of the Stata center. Each student had about ten minutes to present their service project to the entire LTI community. The projects presented on included: helping immigrants learn English, removing graffiti, improving communication between parents and teens, increasing bottle recycling, raising alcohol awareness, and helping to raise awareness of poverty stricken children in Uganda. While each student used their projects to tackle challenging problems, what struck me was how practical each project was. Each student showed how he or she could achieve their goals either by improving already existing programs (such as Invisible children for the raising of awareness of poverty stricken children in Rwanda), or by asking for small donations (under $500). Additionally, I was also impressed by how quickly the students planned on completing their projects. For example, the student who wanted to create a play to raise alcohol awareness was well on his way to completing his goal. Already he has written out the script of the play, talked with the drama teacher of the school, set a date for the play to take place, and now he is helping to caste the actors.

In addition to the presentations, another event featured was a brief reflection by the mentors. This reflection included the mentors presenting each student with a certificate and making a brief speech that acknowledged how much each of the students had grown over the year.

LTI Closing Ceremony 2009:

All family and friends, faculty, LTI community and past alumni are welcome to attend the final LTI gathering of the 2009 Spring Session!

Leadership Training Institute Closing Ceremony
Sunday May 10th
12:00 noon to 2:00 pm
MIT Room 32-123

The importance of letting others lead:

This week's session of LTI highlighted a not too known part of leadership. This week's session showed the importance of being a good follower.

One featured event of this session was an activity in trust. In this activity, the students were blindfolded and led across a maze by some of the mentors. After the activity, the students returned and had a brief discussion on why leadership was important. While people made it clear that leadership was important in order to make sure that things got done, the question was brought up whether bad leadership was better than no leadership. In my opinion, the group came to a good conclusion when they decided that bad leadership was better than no leadership, because bad leadership eventually leads to changes, which ultimately leads to good leadership.

In addition to discussing the importance of leadership, the students also listed qualities of leaders by examining the leaders that impact their lives on a daily basis (such as parents, teachers, and coaches). While I was impressed that the students stated that one characteristic of being a leader is to motivate people, I was blown away when the group made the discovery that good leaders also have to be good followers.

Finally, after the discussion, the students used the rest of the time to prepare for their final project presentations for the Closing Ceremony.

April General Body Meeting and the election to end all elections

On April 22nd, LTI had its monthly General Body Meeting (GBM). This month's meeting consisted of the usual icebreaker, delicious snacks, and an overview of upcoming events for LTI. In addition to these things, this month's GBM stood out from past GBMs in that the focus of this meeting was to assemble next year's LTI executive board.

This month's icebreaker was a game of cherades. Everyone was split into two groups. Within each group every person was given a minute to act out a word or phrase. While no points were recorded, this game was still very competitive.

In addition to the icebreaker, final plans were made for the weekend retreat. The plan for the retreat was to fly kites at Boston Commons and then have an early dinner. Additionally, the group also made plans for the closing ceremony and summer plans (with some traveling, and others staying behind to teach a class with HSSP).

Finally, a large part of the GBM was spent assembling next year's LTI executive board. Elections of each position were used to assemble next year’s executive board. While some positions were not filled, after a brief discussion, we decided to leave those positions alone and instead let them be filled by next year’s new members.

Overall, I was pleased with this month's GBM.

April 5 session

In this week's session of LTI the focus was on improving interviewing skills and raising awareness of world hunger.

The first featured event of this session was a mock interview where students got a chance to practice their interviewing skills. Afterwards, students participated in an activity that demonstrated poverty and world hunger. In this activity, the classroom was divided in two, and half of the students were placed into the "upper class" side of the classroom, while the other students were placed into the "lower class" side of the classroom. Waiters at a fancy restaurant served the students placed into the "upper class" side, while the students in the "lower class" side had to share a bowl of rice. In the end, the students of the "upper class" tried to persuade the guard to let the students from the "lower class" migrate the "upper class" side of the classroom. After the activity, a discussion about poverty and world hunger took place.

Finally, after the lunch break, the students ended the day by comparing and contrasting masculine interviewing skills with feminine interviewing skills. In addition to a discussion, this activity required the students to demonstrating their interviewing style to the entire group.

The Session after Spring Break

The first session of LTI after the spring break can best be described as a “session of inspiration.”

One featured event of this session was the presentations on inspirational leaders by each of the students. Each student gave a short presentation on leaders that either inspired them, or displayed the characteristics of an effective leader. The people presented on ranged from political figures like Barack Obama, to historic figures like Malcolm X, to family members and famous public figures. Overall the theme of the presentations was to show that effective leaders are those who stand up for what they believe in, take action for their beliefs, and inspire other people to be just as passionate for those beliefs as well. After the presentations were finished suggestions were made for improvements.

In addition to the presentations, this session included a discussion on service by a service panel. The service panel included representatives from Alternative Spring Break (an organization that uses its spring break to do community service around the country), Camp Kesem (an organization that works with the children of cancer patients), and Mobility Lab (an organization that builds wheel chairs from bicycle parts and donates them to needy people in Africa). After the three representatives finished talking about their various organizations, they later answered questions and gave advice to the students for their final projects.

After the service panel’s discussion on service, the meeting ended with a group discussion on student projects, and a variety of games.