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 BOOST Breakfast Club Blog is Brain Food for In and Out-of-School Time Leaders!
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Hip-Hop(e): Engaging Youth with Social & Emotional Learning
Some community leaders and I were in shock when teens in our after school hip-hop leadership program came in and told us that they felt like absolute failures at school. The disillusionment came about because these were the same youth who were presenting at regional conferences with Congress members, and opening up for international hip-hop acts. These young people, primarily young men of color, were telling us that they were treated like they were stupid at school, and constantly singled out an...Read More
The Value of the Field Trip
One of my many responsibilities, along with coordinating and maintaining an afterschool program, is to oversee the organization’s field trips. When I was first given this task, I looked at it as more of a side responsibility or least as not requiring as much intentionality as that of the day-to-day happenings of the program. It was not until after I experienced a few of these outings through the eyes of a young person that I truly saw the value of a field trip. Our organization does at lea...Read More
12 Tips to Integrate Academic Enrichment In Afterschool
I have been working with after school programs across the country since 1998. And there are some things that I have learned that make doing academic enrichment activities more successful with kids after school. To meet the goals of this, we need after school not more school and kids should be engaged and having fun. Here are some helpful tips: Meet with your school(s) to find out what areas to focus on, where kids need more time, and how you can work together to align with what they are focusing...Read More
Part 2 – How One After-School Program Prepares Students for the World
Asia Society and BOOST Collaborative are partnering to create a series of blogs on global learning in out-of-school time. Community organizations incorporate global learning into their afterschool programs in a number of ways. Here, Asia Society’s Heather Loewecke interviews Katie Aylwin and Amanda Wells from WHEDco, an organization committed to building a sustainable Bronx, to learn how they have included global components across their afterschool program from the mission to activities to...Read More
Pomp and Circumstance: Engaging Seniors Before Graduation
For many high schools, spring break is here. Or, at least, right around the corner. When students return to the classrooms, extracurricular activities, and their afterschool programs, thoughts may turn to planning lazy summer days with no responsibilities, homework, or teachers! This is especially challenging for the 2014 graduating class, which is extremely susceptible to senioritis this time of year. What kind of “medicine” can be provided to reduce the effects of this seemingly co...Read More
Quiet, Please: How We Engage Introverts
At Techbridge we host a book club that gives us a chance to make time to read and come together to talk about research. We don’t always agree on the subject matter, but the book discussions always get us thinking about how we approach our work with kids and with one another. Our last read was Quiet. In her best seller, Susan Cain shares research and personal experiences about the continuum of extroversion-introversion and how the trait can impact engagement and performance at work and scho...Read More
Kindergarten: First Time for Everything
Over the past few years there has been lots of chatter about Kindergarteners and Transitional Kindergarteners. The view of the first year of elementary school has changed drastically in the past 30 years let alone the inception. Back when Fredrick Froebel first started Kindergarten in 1837 it was seen as a way to nurture children like you would a garden, teachers providing a fertile ground based on play and practical skills so the young minds could grow and flourish. Since then Kindergarten has ...Read More
PLAY. Because Learning Should Be Fun!
It’s testing time again in public schools! Wooohooooo! Ah yes… Number 2 pencils and bubble-in responses, test taking anxiety and the all encompassing fear that even with all the impressive and meaningful gains your students have made through the year so far they might not do as well as you’d wish. Oh, and your evaluations and merit-based pay increases are on the line to boot! Oh standardized testing how I love you so! As educators we are bound to standards and assessments and ...Read More
A Canadian’s Top 10 Checklist for Beating the Winter Blues
It’s the middle of February and we’re in The Zone. Winter has caught up with us, we’re weary of the cold weather, we aren’t getting enough natural sunlight, road conditions are often hardly mediocre, and… the kids are ornery. That’s right: ornery. Downright unpredictable. Bored. Whining. Frustrated. We have plenty of activities for them to do, but they remain energetic one moment but restless and cagey the next. It’s difficult to know how to respond to s...Read More
Parenting Strategies to Conquer the CyberBullying Puzzle
Many articles being written lately are suggesting that parents are the missing piece in solving the cyberbullying puzzle. What they are suggesting is that communication between parents and their children is often too many times missing. Parents need to truly get involved in “cyber” discussions with their children. We need to take the initiative to dialogue on “cyber” issues that our children are engaging in. The following questions and strategies will help parents initiat...Read More
Marketing to the Middle
In California, state and federally funded after-school programs that fail to meet their attendance targets are subject to grant reduction. In the most recent round of adjustments, middle level schools received a disproportionate share of the cuts. While they receive only about a quarter of the ASES and 21st CCLC funds allocated to K-9 schools, they accounted for more than half of the reductions. Clearly, we have a problem engaging middle school kids in our programs. And do you know why? Because ...Read More
Laughter is Good Medicine
Have you ever had that group that just couldn’t get their sillies out? You know, the gigglers, the nervous laughers, or the kids who are just sharing a private joke or kidding around on the side? So often, students have spent their days sitting and focusing on work or drilling for standardized testing that by the time they are out of school and able to let loose a little, they have a hard time refocusing on the new learning opportunities and activities we have planned for them. Rather than...Read More