Week 10 Leadership Lab

Week 10 Leadership Lab

This Leadership Lab is one that many of the Cadets had to prepare for all semester since it is a qualification they needed to pass. It is the Combat Water Survival Test(CWST) which is broken down into 5 categories they must pass all of them to become qualified.They did this training at NEIU since Loyola does not have a pool. We headed over at 5am and did not finish till 8am.

First event is 10 minute Swim.

The Cadets had to Swim 10 minutes without touching anything

Some Cadets are weak swimmers so they choose easier methods of swimming

Second event is 5 minutes of Treading Water

All the Cadets treading water

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Third event is Underwater Gear Ditch

Cadet Park about to jump in for the Underwater Gear Ditch

Fourth event is Gear Swim with Weapon

Cadet Alvarado doing the Gear Swim

Cadet Motzel struggling to swim with a Weapon

Last event is  10 Meter Blindfolded Jump with Weapon.

We helped guide the Cadets off the board so that they would not fall wrong

Me helping guide a Cadet off the board

Week 10

Week 10

This week I created my own lesson. For the past few weeks the lessons focused on leadership and different factors of it. In my opinion one of the most important factors of Good leadership is understanding your power bases. There is Five bases of power that make up a persons overall power base. They are Expert/Knowledge, Referent, Reward, Legitimate/Legal and Coercive. I had the cadets for their homework research the 5 power bases in order to participate in a class discussion.

Expert/Knowledge = The power derived from the leader's accumulation of knowledge, skills and capabilities. 

Referent = The power derived from the leader's personality and is effective as a means of influencing soldiers to the extent they respect and admire the leader.

Reward = The power derived from the capacity of the leader to provide desired rewards to a soldier for good performance.

Legitimate/Legal = The power derived from law and regulation.

Coercive = The power which influences a person to perform or behave in a manner contrary to how that person desires to behave at the time.


I had the cadets as a class discuss what order of importance these should be placed in.Two factors, that are important to understand is first, you use all five as a strong leader and second, you need to look at this model from top down not bottom up. They discussed and argued which is more important and which are not. In the end it is up to the individual to develop their own leadership style off these bases of power. Some are weaker than others. Referent and Expert are the two that should be relied on most and Legitimate and Coercive should not be relied on as much.

Veterans Day

Veterans Day Ceremonies

The ROTC program conducted several ceremonies throughout the varies school that participate in the ROTC program on Veterans Day, Tuesday November 11th. They did one at De Pual, North Park University and NEIU. They also performed a ceremony at Loyola. I helped out with ensuring that the students at Loyola would be ready. They conducted a dress rehearsal on the Monday before around 4pm. I watched them as they went through their rehearsal and critiqued them on it. I helped them with any questions they had as well as any thing I seen that could be done better. One major contribution I had was making sure they conducted the drills right. For example, making sure they saluted at the right time or marched the right way as well as the commands. They also did another dress rehearsal on the day of the event at 8:45am and then another at 11am. The actual ceremony began at 11:15am.

Right before they raised the Flag

Close up of the Flag raising

Everyone Saluting

Week 9

Week 9

This week I was doing a charity event through Pepsicola in Chicago and was not able to instruct my class. Instead I needed to prepare the class and ensure the instructor that was going to teach my class was set to. I had sent the other instructor the lesson that needed to be taught as well as dropped off a stack of quizzes that needed to be taken by the students. I also explained what was my grading criteria for the presentations. One of my students was also doing to speech at a ceremony for Veterans day the following week so she needed to first present it to the class.

I also missed the Leadership Lab that week because I was at the charity event. The students did pugil bouts. This is where they spar with pugil sticks. They wear protective gear and the sticks are padded. They were able to call out each other and spar.

Here is a example of what Pugil sticks looks like.

Week 8 Halloween

Week 8 Halloween

Friday was Halloween and the ROTC program coordinated a fun run on the lake shore path. We ran a total of 3 miles in costumes to celebrate Halloween. Everyone was strongly encouraged to dress up for the run. The cadets started out singing cadence and the cadre finished up the run with cadence. Running cadence is used to stay in step when running as well as motivator. Even companies such as Gatorade use US Army running cadences in their commercials. This cadence is known as "Hard work work" and audio from the commercial is actually a US Army basic training unit on a run.

Here is a few pictures of us running.

The guy on the left is calling(leading) cadence

We did a best costume award after we finished running then took pics of groups and of classes.

The whole ROTC student body

He is one of the winners for his costume.

Another winner

Village people

Week 8

Week 8


I started my morning class with Troop Leading Procedures(TLP's) since they were behind from a week or two before. I made sure to teach the TLP's to them as well as the normal planned class. This weeks lesson consisted of three small lessons. First being team building, which focused on why and how it is important in the army. The second lesson was on time management This lesson covered how to prioritize your tasks in order to complete them in the best manner. The last lesson was the biggest take away for my class. Which was interpersonal communication. There was three videos attached to the lesson to show the students the difference in communication styles.

First video was of LT. Dike is a example of Passive Communication.





Passive Communication – the goal is to appease. Which behaviors are associated with passive communication? Typically individuals who use this type of communication are quiet, withdrawn, sulking, submissive, and avoid eye contact, etc.








 
The second video is of LT. Sobel which is a example of Aggressive Communication.

Aggressive Communication – the goal is to intimidate. The behaviors that are associated with aggressive communication are typically rude.  The person must have the last word, they will talk “over” the other person, they have out of control emotions, and the comments are accusatory or denigrating. 

The last video is of LT. Winters who shows Assertive Communication.

Assertive Communication – the goal is to understand the other individual’s perspective and move together toward a positive outcome. Which behaviors are associated with assertive communication? Individuals who engage in this kind of communication are confident, calm, clear, and controlled. In this case, “controlled” means calibrated to the situation.  There will be times when you need to be assertive and other times when you’ll need to be quiet 

 The leadership lab this week was focused on Grenades and how to properly throw one. They conducted this training at the Pratt Park. They students all went through the motions of throwing one and then they practices throwing the dummy grenades into a pit. Simulating what they would do if they were real grenades. 

Week 7

 Week 7

This week I finished covering problem solving and in my morning class and then went over their mid-term results. Over all most of the students from both classes did well. A few got low C's but the majority was in a B range. I gave my class a 5min presentation on Vehicle Identification as a example of a assignment they will be needing to do. They had to pick any Army related topic and present on it. They needed to make sure it was between 5-10mins as well as no note cards. This assignment was to work on their public speaking skills. This week in class, I taught the students Troop leading procedures. This is a set order in which you react when given a mission.

The troop leading procedures listed above show the steps a leader needs to take to successfully plan and execute a mission given to them. I started out by showing a video of Pickett's charge showing some of the steps being implemented. I broke down each step and the additional steps with in each step to the class. This is one of the hardest concepts for young leaders to fully grasp in the Army. I made sure their was no issues with understanding the lesson given and told them that there would be a quiz the following week.

In the Leadership Lab this week they went over First Aid and had three station step up and did a round robbin. They covered how to assess a casualty and how to prevent shock. Another group was covering how to bandage a wound and how to properly use a tourniquet.