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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I began to reflect on my career and realized that my days as a site coordinator have been the most defining and empowering. I dare say that this experience, as a site coordinator, prepared me for the biggest challenges of not only my career… but my life. So, I have written this ode, in honor of the site coordinator… The one who is a part time employee with a full time attitude. The one who has survived the bullets of lock downs and who also rose to the occasion to help supervise 1400...Read More
I heard a story recently that I’d like to share it with you. One day a mother came to Gandhi with her little boy for help. She asked Gandhi, “Please, Bapu, will you tell my little boy to stop eating sugar. He simply eats too much sugar and will not stop.” Gandhi told the mother to leave and come back with the boy in three days. The mother returned with her son and said to Gandhi, “We have come back as you asked.” Gandhi turned to the boy and said, “Young boy, ...Read More
Summertime is upon us. Summer brings many changes for OST programs. Many afterschool programs turn into full-day programs. The mix of children is dramatically altered – new children register for the summer program that did not attend the program during the school year. Some older kids depart and a new batch of kindergartners arrives. The curriculum and routine of the afterschool program transform into a very different summer program. The staff makeup of the program may change if new staff ...Read More
The daughter of a manicurist at a local Orange County nail salon was visiting her mom at work. She overheard that I had been a teacher and a principal, picking this up from parlor chatter — a charming cultural overlay to having nails done. Julie came right over to engage me in conversation during my manicure. Her mother had told me she loves school. As a fifth grader, she turned out to be a great conversationalist. (Her real name was Tuyen, she mentioned later.) When I asked Julie what sub...Read More
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
There is a very special story written by Emily Perl Kingsley in1987. She tells about planning a fabulous trip to Italy, learning the language and buying the guidebooks, but then landing in Holland instead. At first she’s disappointed because everyone else she knows is going to Italy. Because she’s arrived in Holland, she has to learn a different language and buy different guidebooks and meet different people. Soon she discovers that Holland has windmills, and tulips, and Rembrandts. ...Read More
In developing school based approaches to create safe schools and positive school climates the single most important factor that youth leadership programs neglect to focus in on is the importance of developing a sense of belonging to a group identity for young people. We know that “After transition to middle school, peers become primary sources of support and motivation to achieve while the quality of teacher-student relationships tends to decline with time” (Wentzel, 1996). As we set...Read More
As a technical assistance and professional development provider, I often receive vague requests for “classroom management training.” It usually goes something like this: Program Director: My tutors need training on classroom management. Me: Okay, tell me a little bit about your tutors and your program. Program Director: I use certified teachers to tutor the students in my program. School is dismissed at 3:15 and tutoring takes place from 3:30-4:30. We used to have a lot of participat...Read More
There comes a time in a girl’s life (and boy’s for that matter) when the opposite sex no longer have “koodies.” Once girls discover that they like boys, there is no turning back the hands of time- they have entered the point of no return. By this I mean that all common sense is out the window. Girls enter this “boy crazy” stage in about 6th grade and it gets severely out of control in middle school- trust me! However, it is important to work with our female st...Read More
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