One of the most important genres of communication would be through the newsletter via email. A large amount of communication is also done through group texts, although on a smaller scale. JKB communicates itself through educating underclassmen about JKB, as well as other leadership skills, and various fundraisers, which also spread the message of JKB.
When the ranch began nearly twenty years ago, communication was not always the easiest thing to do. The Internet was a fairly new technology, and communicating from the ranch, in rural Colorado, to nearly 35 schools across the country was a difficult task. The US Postal Service was the main form of communication when the ranch first started. Luckily, technology has changed over the past few years, and as the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research shows, “The last decade has seen a proliferation of new ideas about organizational structure. Many of these new ideas stem from and are made possible by the growing use of [Information Technology]” (Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 167). The JKB ranch has taken full advantage of these leaps in technology, to make communication easier, and consistent with the 21st century. “Communication is a complex process, made more difficult because people often make inaccurate assumptions about its complexity.” (Buerkel-Rothfuss, 3). Communication is a huge reason why things can be successful, especially with JKB. A strong leader has the ability to communicate with all types of people. Communication can be a huge barrier between classes of people, and can often cause a struggle, but a strong leader can overcome the barriers.
Fortunately, nowadays the ranch uses email as a primary form of communication to each of the schools. The monthly newsletter is sent out to all members of JKB, past and present. These newsletters are a great way of staying in touch with the ranch, especially for people who have graduated and moved on in their lives. The newsletters are very informal and include everything from upcoming fundraisers, to pictures of students at the ranch now, to alumni who travel the world, and all their experiences.
The J. Kyle Braid Foundation is a very close-knit community and everyone shares a very strong bond. JKB means something different to each person in this community, but it is something close to their hearts and plays a significant role in their lives.
One of the most important aspects included in the newsletter is the fundraiser. The JKB ranch is a non-profit and pays for hundreds of students to fly out to Colorado each summer. The ranch pays for the three-hour car ride down two lane roads with gorgeous mountains on either side from Denver to Villa Grove. All lodging, meals, white water rafting, horseback riding, paintball, and skeet shooting, is paid for. The entire experience of a lifetime is presented at no cost to the student, or their family. That being said, the students who do attend, and their families are asked to return from the ranch and do them a big favor. They are to spread what they have learned and become even more of a positive influence, peer leader, mentor, captain, friend, a leader in their community, on their team, and in their school then they were prior to experiencing the ranch. This being said, the ranch has a lot of bills to pay. This is mostly done by donations, and fundraisers, which people find out about, by way of the newsletters.
The newsletter is also a way to show results of fundraisers, and other student’s accomplishments. Occasionally, they will post what student’s plans are for after high school, what college they will be attending, if they will be playing a sport in college, or joining a military branch, etc.
The newsletter will also show pictures of events that local high schools have participated in or organized, to volunteer in their communities. Some schools choose to volunteer at a soup kitchen, or a homeless shelter, while others preform leadership workshops or camps. This is where younger students from around the community will come to learn some of the leadership skills from JKB ranch alumni. The newsletter is great so that people in Ohio can see what the people in Illinois are doing to make themselves better. This is nice because it can give other branches of the foundation ideas for how to get involved, or ways to better organize events.
Each newsletter incorporates the JKB logo and motto. This is something very important to the ranch. The logo is shown in the top right circle. It is a drawing of Ken Braid on the left and Kyle Braid on the right, with Kyle looking up to his father. This is significant because it shows a sense of family. Even though thousands of students have been to and through the ranch, it is still run and controlled by Ken and Colleen Braid. I think this says a lot, even after almost twenty years of doing this all summer, and putting an incredible amount of work into organizing it in the winter, they still take pride in it. They have managed to keep the integrity of the ranch and preserve the main goals and values of the ranch, which are to help young teens.
The motto of the ranch, included in each newsletter, is “Teens taking the Lead.” This is what the whole week at the ranch is geared towards. Everything the ranch does, the advisors do, and the ranch alumni do, is geared towards this statement. While at the ranch, students are under the supervision of the Braids, and other advisors. However, once they ‘graduate’ from the ranch, they are expected to be leaders themselves. The advisory role of a JKB sponsor is to make sure they stay on track and to inform the students when they need to begin interviews, and to make sure they maintain a good relationship with other faculty and advisors within the school. The sponsor does not run the group though. This is what makes JKB a unique discourse. Students are the ones who run JKB. The main goal is for the students to learn how to be leaders, and having a sponsor present telling them how to do things is not always effective. Therefore, the advisor has a pretty laid back role, making sure the students use their skills learned from their week at the ranch to lead.
Once everything is flowing, and the students feel comfortable with each other, it is a pretty self-sustaining group. It truly is teens taking the lead. This is also how one of the workshops got its name. The five schools that are involved with JKB in Butler County, Ohio put on a workshop called “Teens Leading Teens.” This is where all the juniors and seniors in JKB invite freshman from all Butler county high schools to attend a day of leadership. This is where the upperclassmen teach the freshmen how to become better leaders. This is done through various activities in the gym, in classrooms, and out on a football field. This is a very important form of communication from JKB to the rest of the community. There are also many ways that each individual high school communicates with its own members.
Lakota West High School is one of the five Butler county schools involved with JKB. At Lakota West, communication is done a much smaller scale. Unlike the ranch, which needs to communicate with dozens of schools across the country, Lakota West JKB communicates with its members, who are simply within the school district. This immediate group would consist of any members who attended the ranch, the alternates and other students who were invited to interview to go to the ranch, but were not chosen, as well as any advisors. This is usually a group of no more than 10-15 students.
One of the most common ways that this group communicates is through texts. Being in high school, almost everyone has cell phones and text messaging is usually the preferred way of communication between high school students. Mass texts, or group texts are often used to communicate meeting times, or locations, or reminders to bring something last minute. This is nice because texts are instant, and are usually read fairly immediately. Occasionally, there will be one or two students who will not have texting capabilities on their cell phone. This can usually cause a lot of issues. The initial though is for them to just be left out. However, since this is a leadership organization, a solution must be found. Luckily, this can be a good problem to have. Not being able to communicate with a student at the last minute means that you will actually have to plan things out ahead of time. From first hand experience, this turned out to be a good thing, and we learned how to plan ahead, including specific details.
When the ranch began nearly twenty years ago, communication was not always the easiest thing to do. The Internet was a fairly new technology, and communicating from the ranch, in rural Colorado, to nearly 35 schools across the country was a difficult task. The US Postal Service was the main form of communication when the ranch first started. Luckily, technology has changed over the past few years, and as the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research shows, “The last decade has seen a proliferation of new ideas about organizational structure. Many of these new ideas stem from and are made possible by the growing use of [Information Technology]” (Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 167). The JKB ranch has taken full advantage of these leaps in technology, to make communication easier, and consistent with the 21st century. “Communication is a complex process, made more difficult because people often make inaccurate assumptions about its complexity.” (Buerkel-Rothfuss, 3). Communication is a huge reason why things can be successful, especially with JKB. A strong leader has the ability to communicate with all types of people. Communication can be a huge barrier between classes of people, and can often cause a struggle, but a strong leader can overcome the barriers.
Fortunately, nowadays the ranch uses email as a primary form of communication to each of the schools. The monthly newsletter is sent out to all members of JKB, past and present. These newsletters are a great way of staying in touch with the ranch, especially for people who have graduated and moved on in their lives. The newsletters are very informal and include everything from upcoming fundraisers, to pictures of students at the ranch now, to alumni who travel the world, and all their experiences.
The J. Kyle Braid Foundation is a very close-knit community and everyone shares a very strong bond. JKB means something different to each person in this community, but it is something close to their hearts and plays a significant role in their lives.
One of the most important aspects included in the newsletter is the fundraiser. The JKB ranch is a non-profit and pays for hundreds of students to fly out to Colorado each summer. The ranch pays for the three-hour car ride down two lane roads with gorgeous mountains on either side from Denver to Villa Grove. All lodging, meals, white water rafting, horseback riding, paintball, and skeet shooting, is paid for. The entire experience of a lifetime is presented at no cost to the student, or their family. That being said, the students who do attend, and their families are asked to return from the ranch and do them a big favor. They are to spread what they have learned and become even more of a positive influence, peer leader, mentor, captain, friend, a leader in their community, on their team, and in their school then they were prior to experiencing the ranch. This being said, the ranch has a lot of bills to pay. This is mostly done by donations, and fundraisers, which people find out about, by way of the newsletters.
The newsletter is also a way to show results of fundraisers, and other student’s accomplishments. Occasionally, they will post what student’s plans are for after high school, what college they will be attending, if they will be playing a sport in college, or joining a military branch, etc.
The newsletter will also show pictures of events that local high schools have participated in or organized, to volunteer in their communities. Some schools choose to volunteer at a soup kitchen, or a homeless shelter, while others preform leadership workshops or camps. This is where younger students from around the community will come to learn some of the leadership skills from JKB ranch alumni. The newsletter is great so that people in Ohio can see what the people in Illinois are doing to make themselves better. This is nice because it can give other branches of the foundation ideas for how to get involved, or ways to better organize events.
Each newsletter incorporates the JKB logo and motto. This is something very important to the ranch. The logo is shown in the top right circle. It is a drawing of Ken Braid on the left and Kyle Braid on the right, with Kyle looking up to his father. This is significant because it shows a sense of family. Even though thousands of students have been to and through the ranch, it is still run and controlled by Ken and Colleen Braid. I think this says a lot, even after almost twenty years of doing this all summer, and putting an incredible amount of work into organizing it in the winter, they still take pride in it. They have managed to keep the integrity of the ranch and preserve the main goals and values of the ranch, which are to help young teens.
The motto of the ranch, included in each newsletter, is “Teens taking the Lead.” This is what the whole week at the ranch is geared towards. Everything the ranch does, the advisors do, and the ranch alumni do, is geared towards this statement. While at the ranch, students are under the supervision of the Braids, and other advisors. However, once they ‘graduate’ from the ranch, they are expected to be leaders themselves. The advisory role of a JKB sponsor is to make sure they stay on track and to inform the students when they need to begin interviews, and to make sure they maintain a good relationship with other faculty and advisors within the school. The sponsor does not run the group though. This is what makes JKB a unique discourse. Students are the ones who run JKB. The main goal is for the students to learn how to be leaders, and having a sponsor present telling them how to do things is not always effective. Therefore, the advisor has a pretty laid back role, making sure the students use their skills learned from their week at the ranch to lead.
Once everything is flowing, and the students feel comfortable with each other, it is a pretty self-sustaining group. It truly is teens taking the lead. This is also how one of the workshops got its name. The five schools that are involved with JKB in Butler County, Ohio put on a workshop called “Teens Leading Teens.” This is where all the juniors and seniors in JKB invite freshman from all Butler county high schools to attend a day of leadership. This is where the upperclassmen teach the freshmen how to become better leaders. This is done through various activities in the gym, in classrooms, and out on a football field. This is a very important form of communication from JKB to the rest of the community. There are also many ways that each individual high school communicates with its own members.
Lakota West High School is one of the five Butler county schools involved with JKB. At Lakota West, communication is done a much smaller scale. Unlike the ranch, which needs to communicate with dozens of schools across the country, Lakota West JKB communicates with its members, who are simply within the school district. This immediate group would consist of any members who attended the ranch, the alternates and other students who were invited to interview to go to the ranch, but were not chosen, as well as any advisors. This is usually a group of no more than 10-15 students.
One of the most common ways that this group communicates is through texts. Being in high school, almost everyone has cell phones and text messaging is usually the preferred way of communication between high school students. Mass texts, or group texts are often used to communicate meeting times, or locations, or reminders to bring something last minute. This is nice because texts are instant, and are usually read fairly immediately. Occasionally, there will be one or two students who will not have texting capabilities on their cell phone. This can usually cause a lot of issues. The initial though is for them to just be left out. However, since this is a leadership organization, a solution must be found. Luckily, this can be a good problem to have. Not being able to communicate with a student at the last minute means that you will actually have to plan things out ahead of time. From first hand experience, this turned out to be a good thing, and we learned how to plan ahead, including specific details.