Teaching High School Students to Lead Now

Everyone can lead, and high school students are no exception.

That idea is at the heart of Lead Now, a new curriculum from Kansas Leadership Center designed to empower high school students to lead in their own lives and communities. In this episode, Jason Bosch, KLC’s Director of Curriculum Innovation, shares how the program came to life and how students themselves helped shape it.

Jason also reflects on his journey from higher education into this work, and why he’s passionate about helping the next generation grow as leaders.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:03

Hi, I'm Olivia, and I'm Kristen. Through our work at Learning Lab, which time we get a front row speed to innovation and personalized kindergarten through 12th grade learning. On this podcast, we share stories of how educators and parents are helping kids discover their passions. So you can do the same for a child you love. Let's give it personal. Hi, everyone, and welcome to Let's Give Personal Real Talk about Reimagining Education. Today we have Jason Bosch, who is the director of curriculum innovation at the Kansas Leadership Center, our near neighbors to Learning Lab. You just walk a couple blocks. Actually, did the other day. I had to go over there. Um, so not that far of a walk. So we're super happy you're here, Jason.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yeah, excited to be here. Thanks for the opportunity.

SPEAKER_04 0:49

Of course. We got to know Jason a little bit as we were opening because I think he oversees some of the student work that Kansas Leadership Center is doing. Um, and he's just a great guy. So we thought he would be great. I love the idea of talking about kids and leadership on this podcast. And so we should do that. Jason. Let's do it. Jason, why don't you tell us a little bit about your role at KLC and maybe like what brought you to that role? Because it I think Kansas Leadership Center is such a cool nonprofit and probably a dream job for a lot of people. So how did you get it?

SPEAKER_00 1:32

For me, it is absolutely my dream job. So um I I come from the world of education. My my first career was in higher education. I was in higher ed for um almost 20 years, um, doing a lot of work in like student services, student affairs. So, like very much focused on student learning and development in outside of the classroom spaces. So, more of those like informal spaces where students learn and grow and develop and learn how to lead. I got introduced to the Kansas Leadership Center back in, gosh, I want to say maybe 2011, 2012. And I had I had spent like many years as an undergraduate, as an early career professional studying leadership. And I think I'd read just about every model theory framework that's out there. And when I got introduced to the KLC framework, I thought, okay, they're on to something unique here. This is a um a unique approach to building capacity in people and organizations, communities to really move the needle on big daunting challenges. So I was I was really drawn to the framework right away. I was working at Emporia State University at the time, and the team that I was on came down to KLC for a two-day custom experience. And I I don't have a very good memory in general, but I remember those two days that I was here back in 2011, 2012. And I've kind of wanted to work at KLC ever since. Um, even before I joined KLC, uh after I became introduced to this leadership framework, I started finding ways to get it in front of people that I knew. So I was finding ways to incorporate it into student organization trainings that I was doing with students. I was working with colleagues to create leadership institutes to be able to bring these ideas to college students. Um, but I had this dream, this vision of being able to reach more people and bring these ideas to more people. And about two and a half years ago, um I got a call and uh from some folks that um that I'd known for a long time at KLC and they said, we think we've got an opportunity that's a good fit for you. And I said, Absolutely, when can I start?

SPEAKER_04 3:55

And at that time you were working at Wichita State University.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

I was working at Wichita State University, yeah. Yeah, I was working in the College of Engineering, um, mostly overseeing student success initiatives. So I was doing a lot of work supporting first generation college students and students who are um who are uh not you know not traditionally well represented in engineering and STEM disciplines. Um and because I've I've loved this framework for so long, I was trying to find ways to incorporate that with my students, which is really fun in an engineering context. And you do you do work in STEM, right? It's highly, highly technical. And so it was a lot of fun finding ways to help these students who are being highly technically trained in their engineering discipline, helping them think about there's all these other types of challenges and problems you're gonna face in your profession and your community life that are gonna need a different skill set.

SPEAKER_04 4:58

Um totally different, really.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

Yeah, big adaptive culture and community challenges. You can't solve it with calculus. It's gonna take a different yeah, it's gonna take a different skill set.

SPEAKER_04 5:09

I didn't know you worked with engineering students, and I think it's interesting because number one, I feel like you're a people person. So throwing a people person at maybe some students, not I mean, that's a stereotype, but and number two, Lenina, you missed it, but we had some college of engineering students in our lobby, and Jason.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Some of them I just ran into three of my former engineering students out of the line.

SPEAKER_04 5:33

This is like a small world moment there the ambassador group was here talking about maybe doing some programming. So I thought that was cool.

SPEAKER_03 5:41

Such a small world.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Full circle.

SPEAKER_03 5:43

Okay, well, let's let's take because we'll talk more about KLC. But maybe this kind of wraps into another point. But how do you, Jason, define leadership?

SPEAKER_04 5:51

Yeah, and what do you love about it so much that you're like this is it was your dream job?

SPEAKER_00 5:58

It's hard for me to now define leadership in any other way than carriages. It's okay to define a zero. I just I have to give you the textbook definition, but it's mobilize. So our definition is mobilizing people to make progress on tough, daunting, adaptive challenges. What I what draws me to that definition is that um yes, we're in the game of building up leadership capacity in people, but that's not the end in and of itself. We're a leadership development organization, but really for us, leadership development and building capacity in people and teams and communities is a venue to get to organizational and community change. I think that's really the business that we're in, is we're helping to build capacity in people to create better cultures, to create healthier cultures, to create stronger and healthier communities throughout Kansas, throughout the country, throughout the world. So leadership development is the way that we do that. But it's not just leadership development for the sake of creating more leaders, it's because we want to actually see um stronger organizations, stronger cultures, healthier communities.

SPEAKER_04 7:18

That seems pretty noble. Um do you think that's what drew you to it in the first place, or why do you think, like as a very young person, you were reading all about leadership, which I wouldn't say is super common. I have some young people in my life that might not be doing that.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

I think initially what drew me to this field of leadership was really more from the individual perspective. So I was really into psychology as an undergraduate student, and I just loved learning about how people work. Why do people behave the way that they do? Um, so I found I sort of gravitated towards psychology initially because of my just interest in people and how they learn and grow and develop and exist in this world. Um, and then I learned about this field called sociology, which is more about, you know, systems and communities and how they operate. And then I found this KLC framework that was sort of a blending of the two. It's it's tapping into how people at an individual level think and behave and how we help people shift behavior at the individual level, but it also takes a system view. How do we actually move and shift systems, whether that's an organization or a community? Um, so it yeah, this framework for me kind of allowed me to bring these two interests that I have, like the individual and the system, and understand them better and then help other people learn how to understand them in a way that then would allow them to intervene differently to help create positive change.

SPEAKER_03 9:01

Yeah, that's so awesome. I love that. So you mentioned KLC has a framework. Can you I mean, you could probably talk about that all day, but give us a high-level overview of the framework for this leadership development.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

Yeah, so I want to go back in time just a little bit. Um the Kansas Health Foundation. Um I don't know if you know the history of KLC and and our our um parent um organization. Uh originally our parent organization, the Kansas Health Foundation. Kansas Health Foundation was established um, I think in the late 80s. I probably should know the exact date, late 80s, early 90s, with the sale of um Wesley Hospital. And so the proceeds from that sale established the Kansas Health Foundation. And their part of their work is about creating healthier communities in Kansas. And around the early 2000 era, they started to recognize that um one of the barriers to creating healthier communities in Kansas was not enough people exercising leadership. So sometimes that looked like people looking to um other people in their communities with authority. That might be elected officials. Um, hey, mayor, hey, city council, hey, school board, solve our community problems for us. And one of the things that the Kansas Health Foundation recognizes if we don't have people at all levels of community, up, down, and across organizational hierarchies and boundaries, collectively working together on big tough challenges like creating healthier communities, we're not going to make much progress.

SPEAKER_03 10:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

So they identified this gap. And to help fill that gap, Kansas Health Foundation started the Kansas Leadership Center in 2007. Um, so we we were very much birthed out of this place of trying to create healthier communities initially. And now that work has evolved into we work with um all types of organizations, education, healthcare, um, for-profit uh companies. And our work has taken us far beyond um the bounds of Kansas. We've done work with partners in all 50 states in the U.S. And I think our current country count is 77 other countries outside of the US. So um, you know, we still very much hold to our core purpose and we show up in lots of different ways with different partners to help them make progress on whatever challenges that they're tackling.

SPEAKER_03 11:38

Very cool. Very, very cool.

SPEAKER_04 11:40

So your role that they thought of you for and called you about, the director of curriculum innovation, what is that?

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Yes, it's actually a little bit of a newer role. So when I started at KLC two years ago, my my role was leadership developer. I was initially hired to be um a teacher and a coach. So um KLC's model has been most of the folks who actually do teaching and coaching are contractors. Um and a couple of years ago, there was a recognition that we need some more sort of in-house capacity to do that. So the initial call that I got was to come join full-time as an internal teacher and coach. And then as we were sort of looking out into the communities we serve, we started seeing opportunities to serve new populations, to address more niche needs that maybe we hadn't seen or addressed before. And so we started finding, in some cases, finding and in some cases creating these opportunities to um take our bread and butter curriculum, but package it together in new ways to meet the needs of particular audiences. And as we started doing that, we started recognizing that there's a lot more opportunity out here. Um, there's a lot more opportunity, for example, to um create some tailored programming for um companies in this region of the state who are facing workforce challenges. So with a partnership and a grant from the Koch Foundation, we created this program called Workforce Innovators, where we brought together cohorts of employees from key businesses in this region who are all facing workforce challenges and sort of centered that common challenge among all these companies to work on throughout the course of the program. Um, another example, probably part of what brings me here today, is we recognize that um we need to be introducing people to this way of thinking about and practicing leadership much earlier in life.

SPEAKER_02 14:02

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

Um Dr. Kmok Morgan, our president and CEO, will often say um something like it's great if we can train all of the 50-year-olds in the world, but if we're not training the 15-year-olds, we're missing the mark. We need young people at the table. They're part of our schools, they're part of our communities. They see the challenges in their schools and communities, and we need them as active partners in leading to make progress. So we we we started seeing these different um populations, these different sectors that had really sort of niche needs, and decided we're gonna start building more programs for those populations, and we need some more capacity to do that. And so um this role was created sort of somewhat of a new role, a reenvisioning of some previous roles that I stepped into in October.

SPEAKER_04 14:58

Oh, cool. Okay, so not that long ago.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Not that long ago.

SPEAKER_04 15:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:02

Well, that is what really what I'm super interested in talking about because not only do I work here, but I have teenagers, I have high school kids in my house. And I think I think that this type of thinking would be really helpful for that age. One thing about this generation, and maybe it's a stereotype, but I feel like they really take to heart community or societal issues in a way that previous generations at their age maybe did not. Yeah. So I think it's timely to teach them how they might contribute to solutions instead of just sit there with anxiety working about um. So tell us kind of maybe like where how this process has gone. I know you did a pilot, or are you doing a pilot? Is it still in progress?

SPEAKER_00 15:51

We've been in various pilot stages. Yes. I'm a fan of a good pilot. So we uh well, I'll preface this by saying KLC has always worked with young people, um, just never in a really strategic and purposeful way like we are now. Um so this work for us started about two years ago. In fact, it was my first week at KLC. Um, it might have been like my third day there. Um we hosted a two-to-day program we called Whenever Youth Developer Leads, and we invited people um from around the state of Kansas who work with youth. I was there. Educators, you were there.

SPEAKER_04 16:29

I was there. Oh, look at you. I remember we're here now. How cool is that? Yeah.

unknown 16:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

I thought it was awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

So we brought we brought educators, we brought youth developers together for two days, and we sort of introduced them to our framework, and then we started asking, okay, you you've seen what we've got here. What do you think the young people you're working with need the most? So we got some feedback in the room that day from folks, and then we did some surveys and some interviews to really learn, like of all of the things in our framework, what are the things that are most important and most helpful to start to introduce to young people? So, as a result of that learning, um, we developed a beta curriculum throughout the rest of 2024. And then we spent the first half of 2025 getting out into community and testing that curriculum with young people. So we partnered with four different youth serving organizations, three here in Wichita, one in Kansas City. And over the course of about six months, we got out in front of about a hundred young people and tested this out and got their feedback.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

What was helpful? What wasn't helpful? What did you learn? Um, and we got some really, really great feedback from the young people. And of course, they told us things like we learned new skills, we learned how to ask better questions, we learned how to consider other perspectives on issues.

SPEAKER_04 17:57

If that's the one takeaway it's worth it. For all of us. For all of us.

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Uh but they also said, I feel more confident now. Um, I feel like like I thought leadership was something for adults, and I see now that it's something for me too.

SPEAKER_04 18:20

That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

So I think really like the benefit of what we were seeing was yes, equipping them with some leadership tools and skills, but also building their sense of confidence, their sense of agency, their sense of self-efficacy that I don't have to wait until I'm whatever, fill in the blank. Yeah. Um, I there's things I can be doing now. So anyway, that's right. We got all this wonderful feedback. We took the feedback, we went back, we um we revised the curriculum, we made some updates, we ended up having one more opportunity to do um sort of another impromptu pilot, got some more feedback, and um got we've got the curriculum in a really good place now. Um, it's pretty much ready to go. And the piece that we're finishing developing out now is our um our certification training. So ultimately, our strategy with this initiative is to train and certify adults who are working with youth to deliver the curriculum directly. That's the only way we're gonna reach scale and get to more young people, is if we are equipping folks like yourselves to be able to go out and deliver that curriculum. So we had our first pilot of our train the trainer um certification program right at the tail end of 2025. And now we're in the process of revising and tightening it that up and we'll be ready for a full launch of this initiative uh this summer.

SPEAKER_04 19:53

So exciting. Yeah, that's very exciting. So your adults I just want to understand like, is it gonna be like the way that the adult KLC works, where these people kind of contract with KLC to do it, or is it gonna be like the principal of the school or the teacher at the school is working with their own students?

SPEAKER_00 20:12

Um It'll be the folks in the schools, in the summer camp programs, the folks who are running the after school programs. Those are the folks that we wanna reach and certify to be able to deliver the curriculum. And so that might look like a high school teacher getting certified and finding ways to just incorporate the modules into their existing coursework. Or it might be offering this training to student clubs, student organizations in the school. Um, it might look like an after-school program, um, having their programming staff certified and building the training into their after-school program or even a summer camp setting. So we want to ultimately we want to get to the folks who are working directly with youth, train them on how to teach our ideas, turn over the curriculum and say, go reach as many young people as you can.

SPEAKER_04 21:12

Tell us the name of the curriculum.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Yeah, so this is hot off the press. This is actually You heard it here first. You are hearing it here first at Learning Lab of Wichita. We have a logo, we have nothing else even created yet in terms of marketing collateral, but our high school youth curriculum is called lead now. We chose that name purposefully. One, it's short, it's succinct.

SPEAKER_02 21:43

Uh huh. That's good.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

But it's really about that word now.

SPEAKER_02 21:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

We want young people to see that you don't have to wait till you're an adult, that there's things you can be doing right now to impact positive change in your school or community. Yeah. And we don't just want you doing that, we need you. You need your voice at the table. So lead now.

SPEAKER_04 22:05

As a marketer, I love the name because you took what you learned from the kids and you branded it in a succinct and catchy way. So good job. Good job.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

From a marketing difference.

SPEAKER_04 22:16

I mean the highest out of accolades. I'm picky. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Well, for the folks who are only listening to the podcast, I'm just going to pat myself on the back track. I want to share something with you though, because I was kind of hoping this would come up. And Kristen, you said something earlier that got me thinking about this. Our why from the very beginning has been we, we, if we want to make progress on really tough challenges in our schools, communities, organizations, institutions, we need young people at the table. So we've been very clear about that why from the beginning. At the end of 2025, I stumbled across this study that for me like really cemented at a deeper level this sense of why and sense of purpose. So I just want to share a couple of stats with you from this particular study that I that I came across. This comes from the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and they called it their um Zen Gen Z vibe check.

SPEAKER_03 23:11

Ah, we love a vibe check.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Solid vibe check here. They did a uh they they surveyed a thousand young people across the US, ages 14 to 22. And I think you'll appreciate what they found. 90% of the young people they surveyed said they care about their communities and they feel a sense of responsibility to be involved. And we saw that in the pilots we did. And I'm so glad to see stats like that because sometimes I think that is like from our generation.

SPEAKER_03 23:48

Oh, yeah. Like what the generational differences are.

SPEAKER_04 23:51

I feel like I mean, having kids that age, I feel it. Like I feel it from their peers. They really do care.

unknown 23:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:59

I think I think so too. And it the young people on our pilots, the 100 young people we served, worked with in our pilots, I mean, they told us the same thing. It was very clear that they they see what's going on in their school. They see what's going on in the country, and they do care. And I think too often young generations have unflattering stories told about them. And I think every older generation does it too. The next young generation, right? And it's like, listen, y'all, we were all once young too, and the older people probably were saying the same things about us that we're saying about today.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

Right. And so I loved, I love this stat. 90% of these young people said, yes, absolutely I care about my community. And absolutely I feel a response sense of responsibility. And 37% of them said, but I don't know how to start. And 33% of them said, I doubt I can make a difference.

SPEAKER_04 25:02

That's sad. That last one gets me.

SPEAKER_00 25:04

It's it's sad. And for me, like this is why Lead Now is coming into existence. It's to get to those 90% of young people who say, I do care and I do want to do something, but I'm not sure I can make a difference and I don't know how to start.

SPEAKER_02 25:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

Lead now is about giving them the confidence and the skills to know where to start and some hope that they actually can make a difference.

SPEAKER_03 25:33

That's really powerful. You know what I'm gonna what am I gonna talk about right now, Kristen? Which framework? Yeah, 100%. Do you know the human action framework?

SPEAKER_00 25:43

I don't.

SPEAKER_03 25:44

Ludwig van Mises, you can do your little research later. It's three parts. So for any human being to take any kind of action, three things have to be true. They have to have a sense of unease, they have to be uncomfortable, they have to have a vision of a better state, and they have to believe that they can make that vision happen. If you so like these young people who are like, no, I know what the vision is. I want to make my community better. That third piece, that belief that I can get there, or that belief that I can do something is what's missing. And so that's what's so lovely about what you're saying with Lead Now is we're gonna give them something that is like bite-sized, like you don't have to wait, you don't have to wait for permission. Here's the skills, here's the the tools that you can do right here and now.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Okay. You know what I love about that? Tell me that the framework again.

SPEAKER_03 26:29

The human action model.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Human action model. I think um, well, I don't think I know, like what I understand from the sound bite you just gave me is we're tapping into that with these young people right off the bat in the very first module in this program.

SPEAKER_03 26:44

Good. Yeah, great.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

The first three questions that we're asking young people in this program is when you think about the future, what concerns you the most? When you think about the future, what is your greatest aspiration?

SPEAKER_02 26:59

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 27:00

And what makes it hard to close that gap back between your concerns?

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Look, just why do you have to probably approve it?

SPEAKER_00 27:08

And the rest of the program is equipping you with the skills and the confidence to be able to help close the gap between what you care about and the bigger vision you have for the future.

SPEAKER_03 27:21

I love it.

SPEAKER_04 27:22

Well, there's just something to be said for doing it with young people. Um it's kind of like what you said, Kay said, but we just see, you know, part of what we do at Learning Lab is give kids agency. So our instructors almost never say, Why would you do that? They say, Why couldn't you do that? And so we see kids doing big things, little kids doing big things. I mean, our creative mind school made catered dinner for 120 people.

SPEAKER_03 27:49

They made the, yeah, they made the food.

SPEAKER_04 27:51

They did the budget, they got the food. And so it's things like that. It's teaching a kid that you can make a difference. And I think if if you do one thing, that's the piece is like giving them that confidence or that belief in themselves.

SPEAKER_03 28:10

Can I offer an idea of like so when you were talking, um it made me think about like, okay, well, where did I learn leadership? Like, when did I learn it? Who taught it to me? I think it was kind of two parts. It was um, I was in 4-H, lifelong 4-H are over here. Um, but especially sports, right? Like you feel that productive struggle of what it means to be a leader when you're on a sports team and everybody has a role and everybody has to do your job, and small actions make big moments and all of that. Kristen and I were we recently met with some folks from Seattle, Washington, but they were sharing about how there is a doctor, Dr. Ben. Do you remember the story of Dr. Ben? So he's a pediatrician. And one of the biggest problems he sees with youth is loneliness and disengagement. And so what Dr. Ben did is he went to his local YMCA and was like, hey, instead of um writing a prescription for some medication, can I write a prescription for them to get signed up for a youth sports club at the YMCA? And they've just seen this like really like full circle moment of like, it's not that our kids need more medication, it's that our kids need engagement. And so it just makes me wonder about how how do you and I know like with the training, you'll be able to get the coaches involved. I think there's a program also called Future Coach that Stand Together has some investments in that's about coaches, soccer coaches specifically. Um, and realizing like your coach is that person who helps teach you leadership. And so I think it's so great.

SPEAKER_04 29:47

It just makes me wonder about like how do you get the right person, the right information for a to put in front of a kid to say, this true you may feel lonely, you may feel disconnected, but is that what you're thinking when you're like doing in-building like people for this training instead of bringing in like a random stranger? I love like the sports thing. We have a wrestling academy here, and we see that the sport motivates them, but I also have a heart for kids that are.

SPEAKER_03 30:14

Oh, it could be theater, it could be anything, it could be anything. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:18

I think so. A couple of of thoughts that come to mind. Um, one is absolutely our goal is we want to, we want to train and certify people who are gonna deliver this to the young people they're already working with. So the teacher, the coach, the club sponsor.

SPEAKER_02 30:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:39

Um, they've already got those relationships built, and we want to give you some additional tools to build into what you're already doing with these young people. Um that's one. The second, our belief, one of the things that we we believe, and it's embedded in our principles at KLC, is that leadership is an activity. It's not a position, it's not a title, and anyone can lead anytime, anywhere. So we we, Jason, I want to get adults in the room to be certified in this who are going to make this available to all the young people they work with, not just the athletes, not just the student council kids, not just those who've already found their way to some sort of club or have a quote like leadership uh role or title. Um, we want this to be accessible to all young people.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

All young people who are looking out in their community going, I want something to be better or different than it is today. I'm just not sure how to start.

SPEAKER_03 31:43

Yeah. Well, because it's uh so I taught the youth entrepreneurs program, but it's now empowered, right? And I had plenty of leaders in my class, but we were using our leadership skills for maybe the wrong um impact that we wanted to see in our community. But I just like we were talking earlier about how kids thrive when they have a job, when they have a role. And I think at any age, you can tell a kid, no, you are a leader. My daughter's three, right? Like we talked about it yesterday. Uh she stared her teacher down when she walked in the classroom today. It was not good. I mean, it's fine. But she is a leader. Like, Lila, you have to be a leader. Um what does that look like? So I just think that there's something really special about like handing that responsibility to them of like, no, you can do this. Um, and what and what they decide to do with it.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 32:35

For every kid. For every kid.

SPEAKER_04 32:36

I'm interested in as you've been doing the pilot programs, like, are there certain issues that kids keep bringing up that they want to work on, or like what are kids interested in working on? Is it just all across the board or um it's it's everything.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

I mean, everything going on in their schools, everything going on in their communities, things going playing out on the national scene. So, you know, when we ask them those those three questions, what are your concerns? What are your aspirations? What makes it hard to close the gap between the two? I mean, they talk about things like um bullying, sense of belonging, mental health challenges among young people, people saying, young people saying, um, I want to be able to walk home from school and feel safe in my community. I want to feel safe in my school. I want to feel safe in my community. They're talking about big challenges out there beyond their own community. Things like, I mean, gosh, everything. Um political division and uh climate issues. Climate changes appear. I mean, all of the big things that adults are probably talking about or would would respond to that question with, these young people see it too and they care.

SPEAKER_02 34:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:02

They know that the world us adults are creating or destroying, however you want to look at it, they know that that's what they're going to inherit.

SPEAKER_02 34:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:12

And they're living it now. They're they're experiencing that world now, and they know that they're gonna inherit it. So yeah, I just keep going back to like they see the challenges, they care about the challenges. They just they need peers and adults to believe in them and equip them to be able to do something about it.

SPEAKER_04 34:31

You know, in my last role, I worked for the National Principals Association. So I was kind of looking at schools from up here, secondary schools. And student choice is like a buzz term for the last probably decade in secondary schools. And the best examples I saw were like the kids get to make the dress code. I feel like for student choice, everybody wants to like jump on the student choice bandwagon, but like that's the most meaningful thing they can give a kid to do. I feel like your framework applied to kids is kind of um like novel, or I mean, we talk about leadership, but like we've never given kids a formula to do it. I just feel like this could go big. Like I think it's a big deal.

SPEAKER_03 35:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:27

That's the goal.

SPEAKER_03 35:31

Yeah, no, it's really there's a lot of potential for it. Um and the fact that it, I mean, leadership is not a curricula or a content specific right. It's a it's the skills, it's the human skills. Every content area, every pathway for engaging kids can involve leadership. So I mean, there's not a place that it doesn't fit. You can talk about it in your math class. If you can do it there, you can do it just about anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 35:56

Yeah, these are um these are life skills, these are civic skills. Um, and part of what we're up against, and we work really hard to try to shift this narrative around like what leadership is, because um there's still a dominant historical view, at least in in the US, that leadership equals title or position. So that's like a barrier that I think we're up against sometimes when we are um trying to make leadership accessible to more people in more spaces. And if we're met with that sort of mindset that leadership is about title or position or, you know, training the next C-suite folks, um, then the audience becomes narrow really quick. Yeah. And so I think you're absolutely right. Part of this is telling this story and helping people see that these skills that we're developing in young people, old people, everywhere in between, these are skills for any area in your life where you desire for something to be better.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

Um I try to live out these skills in my home. And um, on my best days, I do it okay, especially parenting a teenager. Learning how to get more curious and ask her better questions rather than letting letting my button get pushed, right? And responding in a way that I know isn't helpful if I can pause, yeah, consider some other perspectives, and ask a curious question. I'm gonna get a lot farther in working with my teenager to resolve whatever it is that we're working on.

SPEAKER_04 37:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:44

Yeah. And it's hard. It's hard. Curious with my three-year-old too.

SPEAKER_04 37:54

Like, great, cool.

SPEAKER_03 37:56

Um that's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 37:58

Well, so do you have a pathway for an adult who might be listening that wants to get trained? Is there an action that they can take?

SPEAKER_00 38:07

Yeah. Um I imagine we'll have a couple of different paths to becoming a certified lead now um facilitator. Um initially, I think when I say initially, at least probably over the next um six to 12 months while we're still rolling this out, the primary path would be if there's an organization who has, I'm gonna say like six or more people in their organization who are interested in becoming certified, we would partner with that organization and come in and, you know, train six to 12 adults in that school or after-school program and certify a bunch of folks at once within an organization. Um, as we get this off the ground and probably starting in 2027, my hope is that we'll be able to offer one or two um trainings per year at KLC, where folks, you could it could be one person from an organization who's gonna get who wants to get certified would come spend um two and a half days with us at KLC, getting steeped in these ideas and and trained in how to deliver this curriculum. So eventually I see both of those paths where we can go into an organization and train a group, um, or folks could come to um a training hosted at KLC.

SPEAKER_03 39:32

Very good. That's exciting. I I'm just gonna put this in your ear. Um, I met a woman at an emotional agility certification, but she is the leader of in a leadership school. Like that's the kids' experience. I can't remember what it's called. I'm gonna find it. But I thought about KLC and I was like, what would it take to get KLC to start? A school. A school. Jason, we are your best friends. Hey, am I have a place where you could get it started? It's called Learning Lab, which I'm listening. But I think that I'll have to find it. Her name was Julie, and I remember Julie very clearly. I just can't remember the name of the school, but yeah, it's a school that's just rooted around. I mean, that's like that's the language like sports or the you know, the language of other learning environments, their their language.

SPEAKER_04 40:27

You could start a nine through 12 leadership high school and you would take off. We could call it a Jason Bosch lab.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

That's probably not a good idea. But uh, let's let's do that.

SPEAKER_03 40:46

Not for today. I mean, I'm gonna get the live on the podcast. That's what this podcast is for. When it opens its doors, we'll be like, hey, we did it.

SPEAKER_00 40:55

My um this before I ever came to KLC, um I I've been saying for years, somewhat as a joke, but not really, is like, I want to get to like five-year-olds. And I think it'd be like, I would love to have like an a book series, like an illustrated book series for five-year-olds and six-year-olds to start introducing them to this way of thinking about how you work with other people.

SPEAKER_03 41:29

Hey, you know what we're doing.

SPEAKER_00 41:30

Really different than you to make progress on really tough issues.

SPEAKER_03 41:34

If you need a little like pilot group on our Fun Fridays, we have a fabulous instructor. Her name is Candace Smith, and she leads a youth mindset lab class. My son is in it. Um, but they're a bunch of five, six, seven-year-olds who this is what they're talking about.

SPEAKER_04 41:50

Is you can pilot your book with them.

SPEAKER_03 41:52

You can pilot, just go, I don't know, just they're a great talent.

SPEAKER_00 41:57

I think I just need a second office over here to learn more.

SPEAKER_03 42:02

Okay, you can almost learn your book. Um, no, I love that. I think it's so, I mean, that's what's so interesting. I'm so curious to see how our kids grow up because I feel like so. My kids go to the went to the Wichita State Child Development Center. They talk. I mean, my daughter is taught to turn around to somebody and say, I don't like when you do that. She's three. Like she turned around to her brother and she said, I don't like when you call me rude. Because he had called her rude. And well, she kind of was rude, but is but she's learning, and my son was the same way. Like they're learning this language that then it's like, okay, where did we always get taught that way? And then it just got like cut off at a certain point, or like, where did it stop? But if this is the world that our kids are growing up with and they're hearing some more of these narratives, the leadership layer of language, right? Obviously, layers on top of it to where there's no reason a five-year-old couldn't talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

100%. Sometimes I um, as we as we started working with youth, I again, somewhat in gist, but kind of not, we'll talk about this work we're doing as prevention work. And what I mean by that is that um we come into this world naturally curious. And then somewhere along the way, that gets socialized out of us. Yeah. Or for many people, that we we become less curious as we go throughout life. And so much of the heart of our framework is around being a curious person.

SPEAKER_02 43:30

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 43:31

And having a curious mindset and some skills to be curious with other people. And so, um, in some ways, it is like how do we get to young people to encourage them to nurture and cultivate that curiosity and not lose it? Because if they can keep it, imagine in all of the spaces right now where we see divisiveness and division and all the all polarization, imagine if The people showing up in those spaces were a little bit more curious.

SPEAKER_03 44:03

Yeah, that's true. Couldn't agree more.

SPEAKER_04 44:05

On all sides.

SPEAKER_03 44:06

Couldn't agree more.

SPEAKER_04 44:07

That's it sounds like a good basis for a school curriculum.

SPEAKER_03 44:13

I love it. So, Jason, I always like to ask people what are your non-negotiables when it comes to you and the work that you do? What are your non-negotiables? The hills on hill or hills that you would die on?

SPEAKER_04 44:31

You can think for a minute.

SPEAKER_00 44:32

I always think it's so hard. That's a great question. Related to the work that I'm doing. You can take it whichever.

SPEAKER_03 44:39

Yeah, whichever way. I mean, I think sometimes your personal non-negotiables will always like interject, right? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 44:46

I mean, because I I would guess for most people, those are based on their values. Yeah, right. Your value system informs what's on or off the table for you. Yeah. Um I I like to think that one of my core values is integrity, um, which I I might define a little bit differently than others. Um, I think oftentimes integrity is framed as like doing the right thing. And for me, integrity is about my choices and actions being in alignment with the things that I say that I value, that the two are integrated.

SPEAKER_02 45:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

Um, and so I think for me that non-negotiables would be um things that would ask me to violate one of my values.

SPEAKER_04 45:37

Yeah, absolutely. Well, so can you give us an example of your values?

SPEAKER_00 45:42

Um I think in the context of my work at KLC, I very much value um this accessible, inclusive, democratized approach to leadership, um, which is why I feel so strongly, especially with this youth curriculum that we're talking about, that this is not just for the students in quote leadership roles. Yeah. It's not just for the student council kids or the athletes or the captains of the athletic teams.

SPEAKER_03 46:18

Right.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

This needs to be for everybody.

SPEAKER_03 46:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

And so I, as we go out there and start cultivating partnerships with the organizations that want to adopt the curriculum, that's something that I feel really strongly about. Is I I want to know that you're committed to making this accessible to any young person you work with who's hungry to make a difference.

SPEAKER_04 46:40

That's right. I love that. I feel like that matches our values so well because our belief statement is that all kids deserve an education that works for them. Yes. Not just certain type of kids. That's right. All the kids.

SPEAKER_03 46:53

Every kid around the world globally.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

I was see, I was, I was, I was that kid growing up. Like I didn't start to get involved and kind of come out of my shell until college. So I was the kid in high school who might have been missed by an opportunity like this if it was only being made available to the quote student leaders.

SPEAKER_04 47:17

Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of good people that don't come into their own until a little bit later. Going at this a little bit backwards, are you from here?

SPEAKER_00 47:27

I am. Okay. I'm a native.

SPEAKER_03 47:29

You're a native. So where'd you go to school?

SPEAKER_00 47:31

So I went to Mays. Okay. Up on the northwest northwest side of town.

SPEAKER_03 47:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 47:36

And you've lived here your whole life.

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Um up through graduation from college. Okay. So undergrad, I went to Wichita State, and then I left for about 12 years, and I lived elsewhere in Kansas. I lived in Arkansas for a little while. I had a short stint in South Florida on the beach.

SPEAKER_04 47:55

How fast?

SPEAKER_00 47:56

And then I came back to the good old Midwest.

SPEAKER_04 47:59

So higher ed all of that was in higher ed. Higher ed, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when you're starting in higher ed, that's pretty common, isn't it? To jump around schools. I was wondering on that topic of you've you're now focused on younger kids, high school kids with this curriculum, but you worked with a ton of college kids. So because you kind of have the lens of both age groups, what do you think? Because we're talking about AI, we're talking about how do you get kids prepared for college? Because are these careers going to be viable? What do you think that educators and schools need to do to make sure that high school seniors are ready for life?

SPEAKER_03 48:42

Signed a mom of a senior and a junior in high school.

SPEAKER_00 48:46

So well, I don't know how one can come to call themselves a futurist, but I don't think I'm quite a futurist. But if I were trying to look into the crystal ball, I particularly with AI and knowing that that technology is going to increase at an increasingly rapid rate over time, I think human skills are going to become even more critical. The things that are uniquely human capacities that a machine or a chip or an algorithm are never going to be able to do are going to become even more essential.

SPEAKER_02 49:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:28

Um, and a lot of those things are what I would call leadership, but it also sounds like emotional intelligence and communication skills and empathy and those things that I just don't see the algorithms and robots ever replacing about us. Those are going to become even more critical and essential. And in fact, just last week I was um at a conference in New Orleans that was uh talking about this very subject. Like what do we need to be building and developing and educating in young people in this world of AI? And that's essentially what they were saying. And I and I very much agree with that.

SPEAKER_04 50:10

Yeah, I've kind of read that in different iterations from people. The story in my life is my daughter was gonna be an architect and suddenly came home and said she was gonna major in philosophy. And initially that did not go over well with her mom. But as the year has progressed, I'm like, maybe philosophy is like the major you should be talking about. I mean, yeah, because she's gonna know how to think and problem solve and do all these things that are human skills. And I just think like maybe this is like a blessing that she changed her mind. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:46

I think if I had to try to boil it down into a couple things, I think our job is to be um educating people, young and anywhere in their life cycle, to be curious and to learn how to learn.

SPEAKER_04 51:04

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

Because I mean, even all of the things that we're training and educating young people for today, we don't know what their world's gonna look like 10, 15, 20 years from now. But if we can help them learn how to learn and learn how to continue to adapt to an ever-changing, ever-evolving world, then I think we're setting them up for success.

SPEAKER_03 51:25

Yeah. I I think, like I said, I recently did a certification on emotional agility. Susan David, she's at Harvard. She said, you know, we're people like to think we're in an AI revolution, we're actually in a human skills revolution. And emotional agility, I tie very closely to leadership because being emotionally agile is managing your emotions in alignment with your values and your needs. So kind of close to your integrity definition, too. So it's not just leadership. I mean, it's also like knowing or part of leadership is knowing yourself, knowing your values, knowing how you show up in the room in a way that aligns with your values. And that's, you know, involves being curious and being a learner. And like that's always gonna evolve and shift.

SPEAKER_00 52:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 52:12

What else, Kristen? I mean, Jason, is there anything we didn't ask you you want people to know about your work right now, especially in terms of youth?

SPEAKER_00 52:22

Um, I just want everybody out there to listen to this podcast episode and just be really super curious and interested to learn more because um we've been working at this youth initiative for a couple of years now, and we are this close to rolling it out. And when we are, I I want people just like like banging down the door at KLC to bring this to their young people.

SPEAKER_04 52:48

Well, we will share, you know, whenever you have your marketing stuff, send it over. We will be literally ambassadors, but we think it's really a neat thing that you guys are doing, super needed, and I'm excited for you. Congratulations on almost launching. Yeah, almost launching it. Almost. Yeah, we're almost done. It's like having a baby. We did it once.

SPEAKER_03 53:14

We're not too much about it.