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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Why it’s Important to Ask “What Could Go Wrong?” During Program Planning
Planning a new program or improvements to an existing program usually involves setting objectives, planning activities, and other critical tasks. In the excitement of planning something new, it can seem like a buzzkill to ask, “What could go wrong?” Several months ago, I started asking this question consistently with staff teams in my division of the Ann Arbor Public Schools. We discussed it when we were planning a kick-off meeting for a district-wide initiative, when we were conside...Read More
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 sometimes video) recordings similar to a radio program or television episode. A wide range of organization...Read More
October is Dyslexia Awareness Month
1 in 5 children have dyslexia, a specific learning disability that impacts language processing (speech, reading, and writing). While this is something that impacts the lives of the children in our programs, it is something that doesn’t often get covered in teacher or youth worker training programs. As the mother of a child with dyslexia, I have picked up a few tips and hints that I typically pass on to teachers and staff at the beginning of the year. I figured October being Dyslexia Awaren...Read More
5 Strategies to Get into the Groove of Back-to-School
Now that we are a few weeks into the school year, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on how to get into the groove. We have weathered the lead up to program start up and are now several weeks in…so, how do we turn the corner, how do we get ourselves on track for success throughout the year, how do we get into the groove? (play the Madonna song for inspiration!) Here are some of my strategies: 1. Celebrate start up success. Celebrate getting through start up activities and acknowl...Read More
A Fresh Start to a New School Year
School starts for my kids in a week. One week from today! My daughter starts third grade and my son starts KINDERGARTEN, which just seems ridiculous. Time flies, they say. Time doesn’t fly—it rockets. It races. It’s relentless. It leaves me saying wait, Wait, WAIT!!! I can’t catch up with them growing older; I can’t catch up with life passing by; I can’t catch up with any of it. We went back-to-school shopping last weekend and as our cart began filling up with two s...Read More
Finding Common Ground: Connecting Social-Emotional Learning During and Beyond the School Day
The Partnership for Children & Youth (PCY) has recently released Finding Common Ground: Connecting Social-Emotional Learning During and Beyond the School Day. This brief provides language and strategies to support alignment between K-12 and expanded learning programs, by cross-walking key priorities and initiatives in California that impact social-emotional learning (SEL). In PCY’s work with school districts and expanded learning providers over the last year, we have seen that many dis...Read More
May is Mental Health Awareness Month
Have you ever looked into a child’s eyes and been able to see their pain? As people who work with youth, we want to do everything we can to help that child and make that pain go away. But what is that pain? How can we help? Emotional pain is typical for children and youth as they develop and mature. These various types of emotional pain can range from anxiety about a big test at school to sadness because of the passing of a beloved pet. These emotional struggles are in line with typical ad...Read More
Teacher to Student Bullying and a Call for Critical Teacher Education
The outrage over the viral video of Success Academy’s first grade teacher, Charlotte Dial, intimidating and berating her students during a math lesson, unleashed a wave criticism from countless parents, advocates, and educators. The video, recorded in November 2015 by an assistant teacher, shows Dial exhibiting noticeable hostility toward a particular student who fails to explain a math problem to her standard. She proceeds to rip up the girl’s paper and with a raised voice, orders h...Read More
Confessions and Reflections of a Crank Caller
When I was a kid, back in the late 1970’s and 80’s, we had two telephones in my house. One was upstairs and was a tabletop rotary phone, the other was a wall-mounted rotary phone with a super-long cord that you could get all tangled up in as you talked and walked as far as it would allow you to go before it would pull back at you just enough to remind you that you were about to pull the phone off the wall. Telephones then had just one function: voice calls. There were no fancy screen...Read More
Breakthrough Episode Two Recap: More Than Human
Breakthrough is produced by Hollywood power players Ron Howard and Brian Grazer and their Imagine Entertainment company. Each week a different actor or director will delve into real world, human stories that connect the ways that science impacts our lives. The directors include actors like Angela Bassett and Paul Giamatti, Producer/Directors like Ron Howard, Bret Ratner (X-Man) and Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind; I, Robot) and Peter Beg (Friday Night Lights). BOOST Collaborative will be publis...Read More