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!

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Author: breakfastclubguest

A Relevant Repost! Tilling the Soil: Staff Turnover

Corn as high as an elephant’s eye? Why stop there? How is farming equivalent to staff turnover? The seeds are bought. The seller promised a yield surpassing anything ever seen before. Acre upon acre of corn growing much, much higher than an elephant’s eye. The new tractor had been purchased. Much better than the old tractor. And just for show, you bought new work gloves and some new bo...

Working Together: Heroes Through Collaboration

Quick, name any movie you can think of about education. Here are a few that immediately come to my mind: To Sir With Love…Stand and Deliver…Dangerous Minds…Dead Poets Society...Freedom Writers. As you made your list did you notice that they all tell a similar story – the story of a dedicated educator who essentially works alone, often against great odds, to reach out and inspire ...

Taming the Beast – Hip Hop in After-School

I love hip hop music. I love love love the songs on the radio. I love probably the worst of the worst. I love even the songs that treat women like sex objects and I’m a feminist through and through. I just love the sounds and the beats, and the spirit hidden under the layer of words that to me feel like a front, an inheritance of our culture and the roles that are being played out of ignoran...

Part 2: The Great ASES Augmentation of 2017 – A Children’s Story

In 2015, Sir Mark Leno from the village of San Francisco introduced a bill to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour. By now, the full resources of CA3 were focused on the issue, but that still amounted to very little in comparison to the magnitude of the quest. The Partnership for Children and Youth, a longtime member of CA3 led by Lady Jennifer of Peck, was called upon to lead the campaign an...

Part 1: The Great ASES Augmentation of 2017 – A Children’s Story

Gather around, children, and I’ll tell you a story. What kind of story, you ask? Is it a scary story? Is it a funny story? A magical story? No. It’s better than that. It’s the best kind of story there is. It’s a story about policy change. ASES to be exact. Our story begins way back in the year 2006. Do any of you remember that year? Some of you may have been quite young. A traveling minstrel named...

BOOST Master Class: Strengths Based Leadership

I’m grateful for the opportunity to host a Master Class on the topic of Strengths Based Leadership on Wednesday, April 19th from 2:30-4:30 pm during the BOOST Conference. In nearly 20 years of learning from and working for Gallup, I can’t think of a more exciting and impactful topic to share with conference attendees this spring. Gallup research proves that people succeed when they foc...

Service Learning, Global Activism, Leadership and Your Middle School Students

Asia Society and BOOST Collaborative have partnered to create a series of blogs on global learning in out-of-school time. This blog entry was originally published on EdWeek’s Global Learning Blog. This piece is written by Linda Kantor Swerdlow. In her new book, Global Activism in an American School from Empathy to Action, Linda shares an example of how students can take action and use their ...

How To Strengthen Student Listening Skills with Podcasts

Today’s post is written by guest author Monica Burns and was originally posted on ClassTechTips.com.  Monica Burns is an Author, Speaker, Curriculum & EdTech Consultant and Apple Distinguished Educator. Visit her site ClassTechTips.com for more ideas on how to become a tech-savvy teacher. Podcasts are a great way to help strengthen student listening skills. Podcasts are audio (and someti...

The Rise of the Showman Empire: A Seussian Recap of the 2016 Election

A crazy thing happened November the eighth That boggled my senses and battered my faith In the goodness of people, the size of our brains, To vote for a con man who rants and complains That the reason your life isn’t all it should be Is because of some Syrian war refugee. Who knew that the best way to win an election Was wage a campaign filled with hate and rejection? His words were as racis...

Civic Engagement and Education

Today is Election Day. And while we have read, watched, discussed and likely studied candidates, policies, and perspectives, our civic education shouldn’t slow down after this important date. As educators, we have the opportunity to creatively teach and engage young people in civic education. Heather Loewecke, Senior Program Manager, Afterschool and Youth Leadership Initiatives at Asia Society has...

Findings From an Afterschool STEM Learning Initiative: Links to Professional Development and Quality STEM Learning Experiences

The third issue of the Journal of Expanded Learning Opportunities (JELO) has arrived! This spring issue launched at the 2016 BOOST Conference and features a conversation about quality programming in afterschool, an article on the role that social-emotional learning can play to close the achievement and learning gaps, and an article focusing on the links between professional development and quality...

Grow Your Program with Gardening

My two driving passions are youth development and access to fresh food. So the idea of incorporating gardening into youth programs gets me very fired up. There are a lot of great garden resources out there including this previous Breakfast Club Blog: Garden-Based Learning. Truth be told I could chat about gardening plans and show you pictures of my little urban garden all day. But first we should ...