Leadership, Education, and Training (LET 1)

Unit 1: Citizenship in Action Army JROTC-The Making of a Better Citizen

The Past and Purpose of Army JROTC

Moving Up In Army JROTC-Rank and Structure

The Signs of Success

The awards program is for any JROTC cadet who excels. It recognizes high levels of performance, excellence, and achievement. Since the JROTC program recognizes that not all cadets have the same abilities and skills, the Army designed its awards program to recognize as many personal traits as possible in cadets. In this lesson plan you will identify the signs of success you would like to accomplish within your JROTC learning experience.

Your Personal Appearance and Uniform

We often form opinions of others based on their personal appearance. A good personal appearance complements your JROTC uniform. A neatly pressed and clean uniform, with properly placed ribbons, awards, and insignia shows that JROTC cadets have pride in themselves and their unit. This learning plan will expose you to all of the JROTC uniforms, their components, purpose and proper maintenance. Activities and assessment will allow you to apply what you learn to your own appearance and uniform.

Unit 2: Leadership Theory and Application Leadership Defined

This learning plan takes a look at the definition of leadership skills. Learning good leadership skills and becoming a successful leader are not easy tasks. With this basic introduction of leadership, you can begin to appreciate the responsibilities that successful leaders have to themselves, their subordinates, their supervisors, and their organization. Activities in this plan allow you to examine your own leadership behavior strengths and weaknesses and make improvements as necessary.

Leadership Reshuffled

For a long time, there has been great interest in determining what makes a good leader. Researchers have dug deep in the past to examine the origins and evolution of leadership. This lesson explains the theories and approaches to leadership as they have changed, and identifies historical events that have shaped them. This lesson also explores how leadership styles are applied to different kinds of situations.

Leadership from the Inside Out

Values are the driving force behind action. When a leader gives his or her unit a particular mission, it is usually based on what the leader believes to be right. Both the leader’s decisions and actions as well as the followers’ actions must be motivated by their inherent values - strong feelings of right vs. wrong, ethical vs. unethical, or important for the majority vs. important for personal gain. In this learning plan you will explore how your values impact your actions and you will develop a personal code of ethics based on your values.

Principles and Leadership

Leadership is the process of influencing others to accomplish a mission. The leadership skills that you use to accomplish a mission are the same whether you are in a classroom, your neighborhood, church, home or JROTC. To be a good leader, you must provide teammates with purpose, direction, and motivation. Purpose helps them to understand why they are performing a task, direction shows what they must do, and motivation gives them the desire or initiative to do everything they are capable of doing to accomplish their mission. In this learning plan you will explore the principles of leadership and determine what you must do to improve your leadership abilities.

Unit 3: Foundations for Success: Self Awareness

You may notice that some people behave or conduct themselves like you and others behave quite differently. For example, one person may be very quiet and thoughtful while another may be the life of the party. In this learning plan you will identify your own behavior preferences and consider the preferences of others. This knowledge can help you to understand situations as they unfold, improve your communication with others, and influence people and situations to get the results you desire.

Appreciating Diversity Through Winning Colors

Understanding yourself is an important aspect of creating a successful and happy life. It is also important to develop your awareness of others and to become sensitive to the differences and similarities between people. In this learning plan you will explore the similarities and differences between yourself and others and the value of diversity to working as a team.

Becoming an Active Learner

Active learners do not wait for learning to happen — they make it happen. You learned to crawl, to stand up, to walk, and many other things because you wanted to learn them. This desire to learn something made you ask the people around you for help. Active learning is an instinct with which you were born. In this learning plan you will discover your active learning strengths and weaknesses. You will also learn how to improve your thinking and learning skills to become a more effective learner.

Learning Style and Processing Preferences

Learning styles describe the various ways people gather, as we as process information. Each of us has a propensity for looking, listening, or touching in order to learn. For some learning how to play a game of Monopoly might mean reading the instructions. For others it may be to listen to instructions being read and for others it may be to roll the dice and learn while playing. Furthermore, each has a more productive time of day and specific environmental factors that impact learning. In this learning plan you will examine your own learning style and processing preference and the learning models that consider many needs.

Multiple Intelligences

Everyone is unique — in appearance, interest, ability, talent and personality. The brain is no exception. We use our different intelligences to solve problems, choose a profession and excel in various aspects of life. In this learning plan you will explore how your brain can process and take in more information and increase learning by identifying the eight multiple intelligences. You will assess your own intelligence strength to help you increase your learning power.

Thinking Maps

Many instructors approach their learners with a variety of strategies to process information. Think about classroom situations you’ve been in. What strategies were used by the instructor to help students “get it”? Brainstorming, mind-mapping, concept webs and graphic organizers are tools that are often used in the classroom to encourage learning. In this learning plan you will be introduced to Thinking Maps - a visual tool for the thinking processes. Throughout the lesson you will use the eight Thinking Maps to enhance your own learning.