Leadership Weekend
Music for All Summer Symposium 1998-2023
OPPORTUNITY: Fran Kick started KICKin’ IT IN with Bands of America/Music for All back in 1990 as both a speaker and clinician. During the 1998-99 school year his involvement moved from purely a presenter role into a more consultative relationship. Primarily focusing on developing the leadership curriculum, staffing, and budget for both the Leadership Weekend Experience as well as the week long Summer Symposium programming.
RESULTS: In 1999, the Leadership Weekend Experience launched as an expanded, multi-faceted, three-day program. The goal was to create a more interactive series of experiences that developmentally dovetailed leadership messages and team-building methods. A dual-track design provided something different for returning student leaders vs. first-year participants.
Over the next two years the program grew in terms of programming and participants with 526 students attending the 2001 Leadership Weekend Experience. Fran’s work continued to expand with more hands-on involvement working with the symposium’s volunteer SWAG team pre-camp training. In 2006, Leadership Weekend attendance grew to 688 students—representing 38% of the full-week camp attendance.
UPDATES: In 2011, Fran led the redesign to create a new two-day dual-track program, adjusted staffing, redesigned print, video, and web marketing; resulting in a 65% increase in participation from 2011 to 2016 and growing net income per participant from 19% in 2011 to 38% in 2019.
From 2013-2023, on average 53% of the full-week camp attended the Leadership Weekend with a record high 67% of the full-week camp attending the Leadership Weekend in 2023. A Leadership Journal
containing follow-up video lessons was added in 2022 and 2023.
MEASURABLE IMPACT: McREL International, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, private, nonpartisan education research organization, was contracted by Music for All in June 2018 to serve as a third-party developer of the Summer Symposium Survey. The purpose of the survey was to capture participant reaction, level of satisfaction, and knowledge gained from their experience at the Symposium. The results from among the 1,499 students and 335 directors/educators who attended Symposium included A Student Leadership Competency Assessment that found students self-reported “significant growth in their leadership competencies and knowledge gained” from before to after participating in the Summer Symposium. Specifically in each of these seven leadership competencies:
- Motivation and Attitude
- Communication
- Collaboration
- Relationships and Responsibility
- Confidence
Survey data was collected by McREL June 30 – July 9, 2018. A response rate of approximately 21.2% of students and 35.2% of directors completed the survey, both of which were deemed sufficient, given the total sample size, for an external survey, and appropriate to support meaningful interpretation of results according to Shelby Danks, Ph.D. Managing Researcher and Principal Investigator, McREL International.
In 2022, the Student Leadership Competency Assessment survey was replicated by Music for All collecting data June 29 – August 9, 2022 with a response rate of 20% completing the survey.
In 2023, students who participated in the Music for All Summer Symposium were once again assessed on the seven student leadership competencies. Based on the input from Corey Seemiller, Ph.D. author of A Competency-Based Model for Youth Leadership Development the survey split out Attitude and Motivation as well as Relationships and Responsibility into separate scales.
In addition to designing the leadership curriculum, we also create the t-shirt logo, layout design of all notebook materials for students, staff and teachers, as well as assist in the marketing for each year’s program.
This leadership weekend + weeklong leadership experience brought together band, choir, and orchestra students—as well as their directors—from all across the country creating one of America’s largest leadership summer camps for music students & teachers.
“I have witnessed Fran Kick’s abilities to positively shape outcomes and constructively engineer the engagement of others. His keen insight and bigger-picture awareness always add more value to our organization.”
Jeremy L. Earnhart, Ed.D., President and CEO of Music for All
