Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
A dozen teenagers, all but one blindfolded, stumbled around a grassy area of Cascadia State Park Saturday morning, July 27, learning to be leaders.
They were some of the two dozen participants in the 2019 Youth Leadership Summit hosted at the park by the Sweet Home Youth Advisory Council.
Most were from Sweet Home but the group included several from Lebanon, Independence and Corvallis, according to City Councilwoman Lisa Gourley, who advises the YAC and oversaw the planning for the event. The local participants included some kids involved in the Boys & Girls Club and some from Sweet Home Library programs, Gourley said.
She said some Josai exchange students had been expected as well, but didn’t show.
Despite summer work and vacation conflicts, Gourley said she was pleased with the turnout.
The blindfold game involved a designated leader, who wasn’t blindfolded, whose job it was to get his or her followers through an obstacle course of hoops they had to crawl under and poles they needed to circle or step over.
“This is going to be fun,” one participant stated as they donned the blindfolds to attempt the course.
It was clear that Group 2, which had the advantage of watching Group 1 go first, learned some things. They moved through smoothly, in about a quarter of the time it took the first group, though it was not without incident.
“You smacked me in the face!” one participant exclaimed, laughing.
Jim Gourley, a Sweet Home School District Board member, said the game was about developing leadership skills that might not be the first to come to mind.
“Leadership has to listen,” he told the teens. “You have to be able to listen, not just tell people what to do.”
Earlier, the kids had fanned out across the park, armed with photos taken in various spots throughout that they were instructed to duplicate with themselves in them – selfies.
“The purpose was to get them oriented with the park and it also got them to learn about each other, their strengths and weaknesses,” Gourley said. “They may not understand why they’re doing it, but when they get done they see why it was done.
They also listened to guest speakers Peitz Peters of the Grand Ronde tribe; Di Lacey, assistant vice president of COMP-Northwest medical school in Lebanon; Mayor Greg Mahler, who welcomed them; and retired schools Supt. Larry Horton, who talked about civic engagement. They then hiked to Cascadia Cave with Sweet Home Junior High Outdoor Club leaders Mark and Lana Holden.
Lacey pointed out to the teens that in team exercises, such as athletics, leaders often aren’t even on the floor.
“You can lead from the bench in sports,” she said. “(Leadership is not all about being the high scorer. It’s about how how you communicate.”
She noted that they were about to take a hike to Cascadia Cave to see petroglyphs that were estimated to be 1,000 years old.
Those images scratched in the rock, she noted, are communication. The creators of the petroglyphs were putting their thoughts there for others.
She told them that leadership isn’t just vertical, the way many people think of it.
“Sometimes, leadership doesn’t always look like what you think it going to look like,” she said. Lacey suggested that teens could exercise leadership with teachers and parents by convincing them of something, or with their peers.
“Convincing your friends to go to a movie you want to see can be leadership,” she said.
Participants said it was a learning experience.
Richard Belcher, 13, said he participated in the event “because I thought it would be fun. I thought I would learn something, which I did.
Chowing down on a barbecued hamburger lunch provided by the Sweet Home Rotary Club, Belcher said he learned from the blindfold exercise that communication needs to be specific ….
One leader, he noted, was telling the blindfolded teens “to follow my voice.” The next gave more precise directions: “left, right, down.”
“I learned that to trust some people you have to listen. You also have to listen to your surroundings.”
And, he added, sometimes when another person is trying to lead, “you have to help them.”
Kaylah Parrish, who is about to turn 13, said she learned from the game that “you can’t really just depend on the leader. You have to depend on yourself and your teammates. It’s not just the leader, it’s the whole team.”
She said she thought the event was “cool.” She’d decided to participate because “it sounded like fun and I could use more leadership skills and life skills,” she said.
Peters’ presentation on Native American history and culture clearly resonated with the teens.
“I had never really thought about the tribes or anything like that,” she said.
Belcher said he enjoyed “hearing about the tribe and stuff. How they pray. How they leave stuff for the new generation to find so they know about them.
“Some important stuff.”
Mahlia Hewitt, a YAC member who helped plan the event, said it was a good opportunity to for her and her peers to develop leadership skills.
“All of the students said that they loved the activities,” she said afterwards. “I liked the lady from Western.”
Austin Barton,19, of the Boys & Girls Club, was there to supervise, but he also participated in the activities with his charges.
“We came here to try to teach the students, some of whom are from after school program,” he said, referring to the academic support and cultural enrichment program the club offers.
“It’s been pretty interesting,” he said. “I did learn a lot (from Peters). He talked about his culture, how his people got here, how they took the Trail of Tears, how they would group up and have big ceremonies, collect fruits and berries. It’s been fun. It’s been a learning experience for all of us.”