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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Helping Kids Step Into Their Leadership
I run a leadership program at a company aptly called The Leadership Program. My colleagues and I run training and coaching every year for more than 150 people, our team of Leadership Trainers, who go into more than 100 schools every year to work with youth and teachers. We continually proclaim that we are committed to creating experiences that inspire people to step into their leadership and make positive change in their lives and the lives of others. Yet, I am never sure we really do it. We rea...Read More
10 Tips on How Parents Can Step Into Leadership
What does it mean, as a parent, to “step into your leadership”? Beyond the stereotypical “because I’m the parent and I said so” form of leadership, how am I most effectively leading my children? What does it even mean to lead our children? Is it teaching them right from wrong? Is it telling them what to do? Is it pushing them to get good grades and achieve great things? Of course that’s part of it. But the problem with limiting our definition of parent leaders...Read More
Food as a Foundation for Global Understanding
Asia Society and BOOST Collaborative are partnering to create a series of blogs on global learning in out-of-school time. This blog entry was orginally published on EdWeek’s Global Learning Blog. This entry is written by Heather Loewecke, Senior Program Manager, Afterschool and Youth Leadership Initiatives, Asia Society. In this entry she outlines some ideas for incorporating food and cooking into classrooms and afterschool programs. Visit Asia Society’s website for the full list o...Read More
The Red Ribbon
We are going to start with a little game. I am going to quiz you to see how well you know social issue awareness colors. I will provide you with a single color and I would like you to identify all of the social issues that color represents. Here we go: Red. How many social issues were you able to identify? At this point you are probably asking yourself, “Why is he asking such a question?” or “How does this possibly relate to me and what I do?” The answer is: substance abu...Read More
Failing and How to Handle Imperfection
Sometimes you fail at work. Sometimes, it’s a loud and epic fail—like losing your company millions of dollars or insulting your biggest client or spearheading a product that flops. Those definitely suck, and sometimes cost you your job or your reputation. But sometimes… and I think more often, the failure is much quieter. Sometimes, you fail to understand the importance of an issue with a co-worker. Sometimes, you fail to communicate a need properly. Sometimes, you fail to listen. I ...Read More
Parent Education
My son Oliver celebrated his seventh birthday on Monday. He has reached a stage in his development where he equates the value of his own opinions with those of his parents. Our word is no longer accepted as absolute truth. Every statement of fact is met with skepticism. Every directive requires supporting rationale. It’s pretty annoying. But something happened yesterday that made me wonder if he isn’t occasionally wise to question my authority. One of the gifts he received was a Poké...Read More
Experience Inspires Love
When we were the age of our students, neither of us thought that we would be teachers. Even in 2011, when we first entered a classroom to foster relationships between learners across borders, we didn’t consider the possibility that we would end up working in education. But today neither of us could imagine doing anything else. While our path toward becoming educators has not been a traditional one, our mission as co-founders of the not-for-profit organization The OR Network has grown organ...Read More
Full Participation: A Guide to Being Present
By today’s parenting standards, I did something incomprehensible – I did not take any pictures of my kids during an awesome outing on a beautiful Southern California day! I held it together for a full 1.5 hours and did not pull out my iPhone 6 to “capture the moment” so that my kids could later say how great their dad was. Oh, who am I kidding? I wanted great pics so that all my friends on Facebook could gawk at the status update I would post later on. The critical moment in t...Read More
Design Thinking 101: Solving Problems In and Out of the Classroom
Our students have problems to solve. In school, it may be figuring out how many apples Susie has left after giving Jason four from her original ten. However, at home, it may be figuring out how to take care of younger sibling with a physical disability. Or, it may be figuring out how to transform their community from a “food desert” to one flourishing with fresh, healthy fruits and vegetables. Our students are always solving problems-large and small, spoken and unspoken. With this in...Read More
Engineering Challenges Promote 21st-Century Skills and Engage Youth
Asia Society and BOOST Collaborative are partnering 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 entry was written by guest bloggers Natacha Meyer, Senior Curriculum Developer, and Tania Tauer, Senior Curriculum Developer, from the Museum of Science Boston. STEM Training Today’s unprecedented push to train students in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) has been pri...Read More
Strengthening the Oaks
I have three nephews who are the lights of my life. At six, three and one years old, they are going through the beautiful stages of discovering the world, imaginative play and pepperings of endless questions. Their energy, giggles and pretends are all gifts that I cherish each and every day. My one year old nephew is pretty much happy to climb inside his mom’s tomato pots, dirt notwithstanding; my three year old nephew is already expressively pragmatic, wanting to know how things work and ...Read More
Preparation
A combination of layovers and a tight schedule recently led me to be on four planes in 24 hours. It is spring, and it is the Midwest, so weather is frequently a factor, and I was fascinated to experience two of the pilots handle a similar situation in completely different ways. Pilot One, en route to Detroit from Indianapolis, checked in when we were about 25 minutes from landing, as pilots often do. He said hello, gave us a brief update on the goings-on in Detroit, and then before he signed off...Read More