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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Making Fitness Fun in After-School Programs

Exercise is an essential part of a healthy childhood and young adult life, and after-school programs are encouraging America’s youth to get moving and build healthy lifestyle habits. While working out and exercising are crucial for a child’s well-being, it can be challenging to find activities that kids actually enjoy. After-school program directors have to work extra hard to create an exciting and unique curriculum for kids. In this article, we dissect the reasons that exercise is so critical f...Read More

4 Things I Learned From Bonnie Reiss That After School Leaders Should Reflect On

We are honored to share a reflection from Breakfast Club blogger @diegoarancibia about lessons learned from a pioneer and innovator, Bonnie Reiss. Bonnie was the mind behind the inception of Arnold’s All Stars, now known as the After-School All-Stars. Bonnie Reiss, a top advisor to former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, was a lifelong liberal Democrat who found common ground with the Republican governor on education and environmental issues. Here are four tips from Bonnie for anyone to use for...Read More

Turn Your Survey Hell into Survey Heaven in Three Easy Steps

Nearly all after-school and summer programs have their kids take surveys, and nearly all programs suffer through the process. Surveys so rarely live up to their promise, and it gets harder and harder to convince staff and youth to complete this annual chore. In my experience as a professional evaluator, surveys almost always have three big flaws that limit their usefulness. Fix these flaws to turn survey hell to survey heaven! Step One: Organize survey questions by theme Think of the three or fo...Read More

Youth Programming: Filling a Critical Void

Just recently, I started working for the juvenile justice system in the city government. Juvenile justice is a field of youth work that has always intrigued me with having done much academic research on it. At the same time, I knew that I would be opening myself up to experiences and situations that I would never have opened myself up to in any other field of youth work and not all of them were positive. I have seen youth exhibit behaviors and characteristics that I have never seen in any other ...Read More