Evaluation

Behavioral Outcomes

​Before going over the content with the staff and students, I evaluated if the content I'd written would enable the students to have the behavioral outcomes I wrote in the Analysis phase.

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• Define citizenship, address why citizenship matters, and why their personal involvement in citizenship matters

  • October 17th meeting is focused on citizenship, where they examine what constitutes citizenship, write their own definition of citizenship​, and look at the relationship between citizenship and leadership.

  • January 9 meeting focuses on service and the role service plays in being a good citizen and bettering our communities.

• Demonstrate leadership skills and knowledge, with a concrete understanding of the 7 C’s and the Social Change Model.

  • The Social Change Model is introduced in-depth at the retreat, then each C has their own meeting focused on it.​

  • The C's are woven throughout all of the meetings, including the TLBS meetings.

  • Focus on leadership roles, leadership styles, definition of leadership, and examples of change agents.

• Work effectively and collaboratively with a diverse group of students in both a peer and leader capacity.

  • Woven throughout everything, especially the service groups which require both a peer and leader capacity at times.​

  • October 3 meeting focuses on collaboration.

  • November 7 meeting focuses on commitment, especially in groups.

  • November 28 meeting focuses on controversy with civility.

  • February 6 meeting is a problem solving initiative.

• Articulate the accomplishments and impacts of their service group to the broader population.

  • Community Asset Mapping activity on October 3 introduces students to the broader population of their community.

  • SMART goals are set at the October 24 meeting, with a focus on the impact through the "Measurable" aspect. ​

  • April 24 meeting is a guided look at how to demonstrate their successes to the community, with two additional weeks to work on it.

• Feel confident in their abilities as an empathic leader and citizen.

  • Focus on personal values and develop their personal mission statement.​

  • These things are referred back to throughout the entire year.

  • Reflection is built into all meetings.

Student's Feedback

It's important to also evaluate if the changes made for next year line up with the feedback we got from students at the end of the 2016-2017 school year.

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What did the students like last year?

• Initiative-based lessons

• Less discussion, more doing

• Activities/lessons that developed their personal leadership skills directly (ex: rock climbing was a big success)

• Games – good to integrate

• The leadership styles – really resonated with them

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Almost all meetings have initiative-based lessons, or at least more activities and games rather than talking (though there is still a lot of discussion). The leadership styles are introduced (or re-introduced for those returning members) at the retreat and referenced all year. A focus was put on developing personal leadership skills (such as mission statement and individual activities.)

What did the students dislike/suggest changes for last year?

• Have more activities that brought all of TLB together

• Get rid of cohorts

• Enforce attendance better

• Do more things like the retreat

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I got rid of the cohorts completely and all meetings bring all members of TLB together. I did not write anything like an additional retreat, but instead I attempted to make the meetings more interactive, like the retreat was. I made no moves to address the attendance issue, as that is a staff issue and something that should be decided with the President and Vice President.

Evaluating with Staff

The staff I work with at the YMCA have been out of the office for most of the summer, as they run all of the summer camps and tween/teen activities in the Sammamish YMCA. Therefore, I have not had a chance to go over anything with them yet.

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We have a date set on the calendar to evaluate it all in August, which should give us time to make changes before orientation sessions start.

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I would also like to go over this with students who have graduated, to get a sense for what they think. I will need to work with the staff on arranging this, as I don't have the contact information for the students.

Evaluating During the Year

There are several opportunities for evaluation built into the content. Some examples are:

• An online survey after the retreat

• Many reflection points that have written components, which staff can collect to get a better sense of where students stand.

• January 16 TLBS meeting has a Plus and Delta session for the groups to all participate in.

• January 23 TLBC meeting is almost entirely focused on reflection and getting feedback from the students on everything related to the program.

• May 29 TLBC meeting is focused entirely on reflection, including getting feedback on the program. 

• Formal evaluations at the last TLB meeting/end of the year party for all students.