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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2017: I Am Here (with love)
Starlings In Winter, by Mary Oliver Chunky and noisy, but with stars in their black feathers, they spring from the telephone wire and instantly they are acrobats in the freezing wind. And now, in the theater of air, they swing over buildings, dipping and rising; they float like one stippled star that opens, becomes for a moment fragmented, then closes again; and you watch and you try but you simply can’t imagine how they do it with no articulated instruction, no pause, only the silent conf...Read More
What is After-School?
What is after-school you ask? It’s an answer 14 years in the making, although the recipe was already baking long before I came on the scene! After-school is a THING! Not a time in the day where you play, Bring out some board games And close out the day. After-school is a thing to be seen. Something to look back on and say, “Remember when…,” With a tear in your soul. Not a timesheet to track, Or a paycheck to hold! After-school is a thing that happens to you, Transforming ...Read More
Cheers to You, Youth Workers
Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got. Taking a break from all your worries, sure would help a lot. Wouldn’t you like to get away? Sometimes you want to go Where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came. Where Everybody Knows Your Name Lyrics by Gary Portnoy and Judy Hart Angelo As someone who grew up in the ’80s, these lyrics had a special meaning for me – they meant it was time to go to bed. But this summer, that meaning...Read More
Can You Alter Unconscious Bias? Changing the Conversation.
On Saturday morning… the City of Cleveland and its surrounding suburbs anxiously awaited the verdict reading of the Michael Brelo case, a white American police officer who stood on the hood of a car and shot fifteen rounds into the bodies of two black Americans who sat in the front seat of the car. There is nothing right about this situation and there is nothing right about the verdict, which cleared him on all accounts. However, the most difficult lesson in this story, and many similar st...Read More
My Why: Our Kids Belong to All of Us
I have not yet worked full-time for a for-profit company. I’m steadily climbing to the mid-point in my professional career, and so far, it’s been a path from museums to schools to non-profits. I sometimes wonder why and how I got started on my work road, though as the child of two public school teachers, perhaps it’s not much of a stretch that I’m a professional out-of-school time youth instructor. Sometimes I wonder if I would be satisfied working in the corporate world,...Read More
My Why: It Takes a Village
I do what I do because I was given an opportunity 18 years ago to join the Center for the Collaborative Classroom (formally known as the Developmental Studies Center). I left the classroom to join a team at CCC to work on a National Science Foundation funded project to help kids talk to a significant adult in their life about mathematics. This project started with a school to home component that we developed with ease, something our team of teachers was comfortable with. The next part of the pro...Read More
My Why: Youth Are Assets
I started off as a high school English teacher in an East Harlem school with Title 1 funding. My plan was to become a principal and I knew classroom experience was imperative to being an effective school leader. Teacher training helped me understand how to write lessons plans, use different forms of assessment, and reflect on how my own education may influence the way I “showed up” as a teacher. It didn’t prepare me to deal with all the social and personal factors that influenc...Read More
My Why: Defining Moments and Relationships
In college, I was in search of a work-study position to help pay the bills. I knew I loved working with children and so I interviewed for a position with a local after school program. Not only did I receive the job, I received a life-long mentor in the field of education, a passion for the out-of-school time field, and a purpose for continuing my education and career path with children, families, and communities. I do what I do because of the relationship aspect of out-of-school time programs. F...Read More
My Why: Making a Meaningful Impact
I wasn’t one of those people that knew exactly what they wanted to be when they grew up. You know, the kid that knew since the age of five. For me, this was a question I grappled with throughout my life, until I directed my path towards happiness. After college, a variety of empty jobs and many years of volunteer work, I realized that my primary goal was simple: to make a meaningful impact. I wanted to inspire others to do the same, and use my experiences to pay it forward. For me this cou...Read More
My Why: Curly’s Law – A Bearer of Hope
I love the scene in the movie City Slickers where Billy Crystal’s character, Mitch, is riding alone with Curly, played by Jack Palance. Curly gives Mitch some advice about life. Curly: You know what the secret of life is? Mitch: No. What? Curly: [holds up one finger] This. Mitch: Your finger? Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean s**t. Mitch: That’s great, but what’s the one thing? Curly: That’s what you gotta figure out....Read More
My Why: Closing the Opportunity Gap
I am driven by creating opportunities for young people, for closing the opportunity gap. I look at what elite private schools offer their young learners and then create, adjust, finagle, and hustle to try and ensure that students from less affluent public schools get the same chances to try new things. If a $25,000/year private school takes their Juniors snorkeling and kayaking, we need to offer the same to a kid from South LA. They may be our next Jacques Cousteau. If the best schools in wealth...Read More
My Why: Different Is OK
I grew up in a small town in Ohio in the 1960s and 70s, at a time and place where everyone strove to be the same. Everyone (and I mean everyone) had 2 parents, owned a modest home and went to church. But I was different. My father died after I was born, my Mom had a different last name from remarriage, and my two aunts (one of whom wasn’t actually related) helped raise me. I experienced great love as a child but there was an underlying sense that being different was somehow “bad.R...Read More