Breakfast Club Blog

The BOOST Breakfast Club Blog is a curated space where bloggers from around the world contribute content on a continual basis about a variety of topics relevant to in and out-of-school time. The BOOST Breakfast Club blog is at the heart of an ongoing dialogue where expanded learning and education professionals share their personal thoughts and stories from the in and out-of-school time field. They also tell us what they ate for breakfast!

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer, or company. Enjoy the brain food.

The BOOST Breakfast Club Blog is Brain Food for In and Out-of-School Time Leaders!

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The Student and The Teacher

For the past year and half, our team has been working to transform the organizational culture of large educational systems. Though deep and profound as a sentence, we have found that this transformation essentially begins with oneself.  Simple to say and write.  A lifetime to do and practice.  And yet many times we are often asked, “This is great stuff…. But when are we going to get to the real work?”  The Personal Mastery needed to lead and transform large educational systems (especially instit...Read More

Are You Leading With WHY?

What gets you out of bed in the morning — what you do or why you do it? If you are in the youth development field, I have a feeling that your “why” motivates you the most. You’re driven to make a positive difference in the lives of young people. In his book “Start with Why,” Simon Sinek argues that we are pretty good at saying what we are doing and how we are doing it, but not always good at explaining the why of what we do. His message to the business community: making the why clear can i...Read More

Sharing The Vision And Shaping The Future: A Message To The Next Generation Of Leaders

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the passage of California’s first comprehensive afterschool legislation. Since then, the investment in California’s most vulnerable children and young people has grown to $630 million a year and redefined what quality expanded learning means and looks like. Those of us who were privileged to lead the way through uncharted terrain worked in complex organizational environments in cities, counties, school districts and nonprofit organizations. We explored new...Read More

Algorithms with Empathy

The algorithms, math, hardware, physics, engineering, computer science, and artificial intelligence behind breakthrough discoveries like those spearheaded by Elon Musk and his teams require a person to be emotionally, socially, and physically prepared for the failures and successes of attempting to reimagine and change our world. I watched with great admiration as one of the most successful human beings of our time, possibly in all human history, cried at the thought of his heroes knocking him f...Read More

The Flawed Leader

For the past 15 years, I have developed and grown an afterschool program model from its infancy serving 20 kids in a church to serving over 600 kids across three cities, demonstrating incredible success rates. By all means I have been deemed as a visionary, strong, competent leader.  Each year as we get larger and stronger, the pressure mounts as the praise continues, and the expectations build.  However, what most people on the outside looking in don’t see is with all the ambition, the drive fo...Read More

Adults Aren’t Mature – Get Over It!

You’re an adult. You work with other adults. And neither of those statements guarantees maturity. Get over it. Before you stop reading, insulted and angry at me, let me clarify where this is headed. I write this in order to rid you of the nearly universal frustration that results in the assumption of adult maturity. An assumption that leads to all sorts of gnashing of teeth. Whenever I’m working in an organization in my consulting practice that focuses entirely on employee job satisf...Read More