FFA and 4-H are two youth-based organizations that cite leadership development as a key foundational component. The purpose of this study was to review and document the historical development of leadership events and activities in both programs. Evidence can be found of leadership development in schools, conferences, and camps. Leadership-related events evolved into public-speaking contests, debates, farm demonstrations, and implementation of chapter and club programs of activities. Leadership resources from both organizations include official manuals, convention proceedings, advisor/leader handbooks, textbooks, and state and national magazines. Historically, both organizations provided members multiple opportunities to develop leadership behaviors, skills, and characteristics through knowledge and skill acquisition, participation in community and civic activities, and in the transition into the workforce and/or postsecondary education.

Block scheduling was established in response to educational reform measures and is the restructuring of the school day in longer class Literature Review and Theoretical FrameworkIn the past two decades various changes have impacted the public school educational system. In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education addressed a report to the American people regarding the risks that education in the United States would be facing in the years ahead. This report, A Nation at Risk, generated reactions that ultimately led to action on educational reform issues. Years later in 1994, the National Education Commission on Time and Learning concluded, in Prisoners of Time (1994), that student time could be better spent, and the teaching and learning process would be better fulfilled, if schools were to move to a block scheduling format, "moving from a focus on time to a focus on learning" (p. 4). The result was the proposal to restructure the school day to longer class periods and fewer classes and ultimately became known as block scheduling.Block scheduling reorganizes the curriculum into a different format that breaks up the daily contact teachers have with the same group of students over the course of an entire school year. Nationally schools are using multiple forms of block scheduling, including alternate day block, 4 X 4 semester block, quarter-on/quarter-off block,