Teen Leadership Washington County is an annual program for high school juniors and seniors that focuses on leadership development, career opportunities, and learning about the community.  The Family and Consumer Sciences Agent, 4-H Youth Development Agent, and School Gifted and Talented Coordinator partner to plan and implement monthly meetings to cover topics like financial management, business and industry, agriculture and more. The Teen Leadership Retreat was held on August 17, 2023 to kickoff the program and help teens to learn more about themselves.

Twenty-five teen leaders presented their first program assignment, which asks the teens to compile a presentation board that features photos of agriculture in the county, new construction, the teen at school, their friends, their family, photos depicting their heritage, things in the county they want to remain the same, and things in the county they want to change.  The teen leaders take turns presenting their photos to the group.  When asked what the teens learned from this activity, responses included, "I love my town and cherish the small things," and "I learned to show my heritage and what that meant to me."  In the topic of what to change, many teens recognize a lack of activities for their age group that are not school related.  The program coordinators encouraged the teens to speak to our community leaders about this topic in future Teen Leadership days.

In order to introduce leadership personalities to the teens, our next activity was True Colors.  The teens completed self assessments to determine their dominant leadership personality color and learned more about characteristics, strengths, and challenges for each color.  We discussed how to work as a team with various personalities and the teens completed an example in which they worked as groups to design community festivals.  They were asked to assign tasks to each True Color personality, so that they could see where strengths were best utilized.  When asked how teens will use what they learned from this activity, replies included, "I will be more self aware of what I need," "It will help me to work with others more smoothly," and "I will make sure to stay patient with others even if I think differently than them."

The Teen Leadership Retreat successfully introduced the topic of leadership personalities and helped the students to learn more about themselves and each other.  The teen leaders will continue to develop their leadership and communication skills in future Teen Leadership days.