Nelson County does not have any community theater opportunities available to youth outside of school drama clubs or electives. Earlier in the year, a program with teen "young leaders" within the county identified that teens feel there is a lack of "things to do for young people." Therefore, this opportunity was created to allow teens to help create a program for other youth. 

This leadership program was developed to build teen leadership skills, confidence, self awareness, and presentation/teaching, and performance skills.  These skills can be applied to leadership opportunities as well as career readiness within many fields.

Providing youth with the ability to enhance and develop leadership skills is of great importance in Nelson County.  The development of these skills is one of the preeminent skills necessary to grow as an individual, a community member and a leader.  Using age appropriate activities selected from the approved Kentucky 4-H Performing Arts Curriculum, teens are guided to maximize the ability of youth to develop their presentation, self-reflection and performing capacities.

Extension Agent, Nicole Howard, identified a collaboration opportunity with the Bethlehem Drama teacher, Katie Keifer. As partners, they divided the educational portions of the leadership training evenly. Nicole taught leadership and Katie taught Performing Arts. Together, the partners recruited 3 teens from Bethlehem High School and 4-H who were interested in leadership and/or performing arts. Utilizing Performing Arts Curriculum and Leadership Curriculum, trainers led teens through activities that helped them to learn, self reflect, and apply leadership skills as well as teaching and performing arts skills. The activities included the colors personality quiz, a leadership self assessment, performing arts warm ups from the performing arts curriculum, vocabulary, a brief education of lesson planning, and a guided planning session. The physical outcome was 10 hours of lesson plans created by teens for youth. Evaluation was done through observation that teens became more confident in their abilities to reflect and teach others. Other evaluation included testimonial where one teen stated, "this explains so much!" after participating in the personality test. Each teen was also able to identify at least one area of leadership which they can focus on improving.

Initial Outcome – Teens gained awareness of their own strengths and weaknesses, learned about curriculum and lesson planning, practiced teaching methods, identified important performance related vocabulary, and gained confidence in their planning skills.

Intermediate Outcome – Teens applied curriculum and created lesson plans, defined important vocabulary, and exhibited teaching skills to one another.