Adult Supervision Requirements

Leaders in Life Youth Conference Adult Advisors:

We greatly appreciate your support for young people and for our conference for youth planned by youth.  It is truly a unique event, one of the largest youth conferences planned by teens in the entire United States.  The Youth Planning Committee, with over 120 young people, has been working very hard to plan this conference to give young people a voice in our community and to show what great things young people can accomplish.

The purpose of this conference and resource fair is to provide youth with an opportunity to learn more about community resources, a chance to plan for their future, and a positive and safe environment to discuss and evaluate issues they face daily.

Please note the required student to adult ratio is 10:1 and you are responsible for providing enough advisors/chaperones for your student attendees. Adult Advisors are required to stay with the students throughout the entire day. Schools or agencies in violation of this request may be asked to leave the conference. School/agency employees as well as parents may serve as advisors or chaperones and are encouraged to help stimulate learning through discussion and debriefing of each segment of the conference.

Over the past 15 years, we have found that 95% of the adult advisors follow these guidelines. Unfortunately, some do not.  It has come to our attention that some adult advisors do not accompany their students/youth throughout the day. Sadly we have had feedback from several schools that they will NOT attend our conference this year because they had a negative experience last year in workshops and in the main auditorium or Resource Fair with students left unattended. They said these students were interrupting youth presenters/speakers and using exceedingly foul language, even when asked by adult advisors from other schools to stop talking rudely or to stop using their cell phones. We had some vandalism in restrooms in past years that we were sent a repair bill to pay out of the conference fees. We are able to keep the cost for the conference very affordable (t-shirt, lunch and national speakers and workshops for $15.00 per person) so that ALL students can attend. We have a very diverse group of student planners from all types of schools (public, private, community, continuation, charter) and that is the way we want to keep it.

If this happens this year, the unsupervised student groups will be asked to join their adult advisor and leave the conference and we will follow this up with a letter to the school Principal and Superintendent or Agency Director.

Please discuss your expectations for appropriate behavior with your students prior to entering the Convention Center. Remind your adult advisors that their role is to show they value your students by spending time WITH THEM today as they attend workshops, discuss speakers and talk with them about what they hear and see. We look forward to your support on this as it sends a clear message to your students that they matter and that you care about them.

Thank you! Leaders in Life Youth Conference Planning Committee