

By Nora Lynn
When Anthony Pearson — or Mr. Pearson, as the students in an Eisenhower Middle School 8th grade classroom call him — is asked to share his math expertise, he’s prepared to use his skill set to help these students succeed.
Anthony Pearson, a current K-State freshman majoring in secondary education, spends two days a week in this classroom helping students finish homework and stay on task. These responsibilities require leadership skills that Pearson says he acquired as a Counselor in Training (CIT) at Rock Springs Ranch in the summer of 2022.
The Rock Springs Ranch teen leadership program is for rising high school sophomores through seniors and is split into two sections — Leaders in Training (LITs) and Counselors in Training (CITs).
While these campers still get to experience the excitement of camp activities like horses and archery, they also spend their days learning leadership skills including giving and receiving feedback, teambuilding, and conflict resolution, among others.
“We get put with our counselor who we’re paired with and then we just get to work with them and it’s honestly a direct application of what we learned in the morning, so that’s really cool,” Pearson said. “You learn something in the morning and then you get to test how it works in the afternoon.”
Current Creighton University freshman Elizabeth Anderson, a CIT in the summer of 2022, believes that the teen leadership program at Rock Springs is one of the best ways for youth to learn leadership skills because the program focuses on practice and implementation.
“To actually go into action and put those skills into motion, it’s a whole different experience because you get to see that these techniques work,” Anderson said. “It’s like if you were given instruction on how to play guitar, and then you never actually played the guitar, you’re not going to learn. Like you actually have to practice leadership to become good at leadership.”
LITs and CITs work on these skills the entire week they attend Rock Springs, allowing ample time to practice leadership and grow with fellow campers. K-State junior Emily Lanie, who was the teen leadership counselor in 2023 and will be returning to Rock Springs as the Staff Support Leader in summer 2024, had the opportunity to watch this growth in her teen campers.
“In the camp setting, I think it takes away the school aspect, the grown-up aspect, and allows them to be their more authentic self and really understand their strengths,” Lanie said. “I feel like when you can be really yourself and learn things you’re good at, it gives you a lot more confidence, and as leaders, you need to have confidence in yourself.”
While individual growth is a major topic in the teen leadership program, the value of teamwork is not overlooked.
Samantha Johnson, a 2023 Rock Springs CIT, recalls that she was nervous before her camp session because she feared she’d be left to fend for herself watching younger campers. But when Johnson finally experienced the teen leadership program at Rock Springs, she found that she had ample support not just from the Rock Springs staff, but also from her fellow CITs.
“We really just helped each other try to become the best versions of ourselves and try to become the best leaders that we could while we were doing community service or when we were with our kids or whenever we worked together,” Johnson said.
While Pearson, Anderson and Johnson have continued to use the leadership skills they learned at Rock Springs in varying career paths, each former CIT stated that the friendships they made during their week in the teen leadership program were unlike others they experienced in their separate lives.
“There’s this idea that friendships are built on shared interest, but they’re more built on shared experiences,” Anderson said. “And this, you’re going through the normal camp experiences, but there’s another level of intensity to them because you play a larger role in it, you’re helping lead other kids. So I feel that you go through that shared experience, and it makes people who would probably not talk very much in real life close.”