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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7 Specialties of the Afterschool Program Director
The director’s job can be very complex. We’ve come up with a powerful yet simple way to articulate what the job entails, illustrate how to effectively manage your time, and leverage your efforts to maximize your success. We have identified 7 Specialties that help bring simplicity to understanding a challenging and complex job. When directors only specialize in one of these areas (such as… “MY specialty is parent relationships”), they add value, but they never really...Read More
Who Leads Your Afterschool Program?
In my roles over the past decade, I’ve met quite a few afterschool and summer program leaders. Some of them strongly portray traits found in successful leaders. These adults set the tone for their sites, providing order and structure, flexibility, sternness, and a passion for children and making a difference in their lives. They communicate high expectations, but are nurturing in helping staff and children achieve them. They do not speak loudly, but carry a clipboard filled with procedures...Read More
6 Reminders for Maintaining your Leadership Rhythm
As I write, it’s one of those times where I must focus the lens for the gritty and most meaningful things to tell you about. We only have a few sentences to share before our time together is up, and it’s important to make them count. So that leads us to rhythm. There’s nothing like a band that plays together, a motor in with proper timing, a NFL team operating as a unit, and especially a leader that is in balance. Beyond most, I believe that you understand the importance of rhy...Read More
Ride the Wave!
In our field, systems, and relationships teeter-totter between structured and organic. Although our roots call us to be relationship driven, the push to professionalize ourselves and claim a noticeable and valued function in education has forced us to be more structured than ever. The current leadership in youth work has effectively created a pathway that balances the beauty of an organic team and the usefulness of structured planning. I believe this pathway was created by two things: a new wave...Read More
Leading With Purpose, Passion and Intention
A few years ago I wrote a book called Lessons in Leadership, drawing on the wisdom of pioneers in the afterschool world – individuals who have made a real difference in developing and sustaining exemplary programs, forging authentic partnerships, building the capacity of thousands of staff members to be more successful than they had ever imagined, influencing public policy and impacting the lives of millions of children and young people. I’ve received hundreds of e-mails and phone calls fr...Read More
Adults Aren’t Mature – Get Over It!
You’re an adult. You work with other adults. And neither of those statements guarantees maturity. Get over it. Before you stop reading, insulted and angry at me, let me clarify where this is headed. I write this in order to rid you of the nearly universal frustration that results in the assumption of adult maturity. An assumption that leads to all sorts of gnashing of teeth. Whenever I’m working in an organization in my consulting practice that focuses entirely on employee job satisf...Read More
Lead People, Not Programs
If you are in any sort of leadership role in any type of organization running any type of program and managing any number of people, I’m asking you to do something. I want you to copy the sentence below, paste it into a Word doc, increase the font size to about 200, bold it, italicize it, and post it somewhere in your office where you read it every day. Here it is: NOTHING INCREASES STAFF MORALE AND JOB SATISFACTION MORE THAN A WELL RUN ORGANIZATION. Do it. Seriously. Do it. Now. I’l...Read More
4 Quick Thoughts on Leadership
“Whatever you are, be a good one.” –Abraham Lincoln I love people who push themselves to perform at the highest level possible. Because I’m a child of the 80’s, where we proudly rocked mullets and tight rolled our jeans, I think about Michael Jordan. The game was over and you’d find him in the gym shooting 500 free throws. He had an internal drive to do better. He wanted to be the best he could be. Because I can actually hear your staff and students banging on your ...Read More