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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4 Things You Can Do Right Now to Promote Meaningful Participation in Afterschool
Research tells us that if we hope to make a difference in young people’s learning, we need to provide opportunities for learning that is meaningful. This is especially important as youth return to afterschool programs after a year of isolation. If young people are engaged in meaningful participation, they are empowered to be self-directed, make responsible choices about how to use their time, and participate as group members in making decisions that influence the larger program and what they lea...Read More
My Why: Pleasurable and Meaningful Work
There are those in my family who still don’t “get” what I do and wonder, sometimes audibly, if I will ever get a real job. They ask, “Why form a non-profit organization. Do you want to be poor all your life?” I am someone who didn’t plan to work in this profession. When I was in college, studying biology and chemistry, I knew working with kids would someday make me a better Dad, so I took a part-time work-study job in an afterschool program. Then I got hooked ...Read More
The Value of the Field Trip
One of my many responsibilities, along with coordinating and maintaining an afterschool program, is to oversee the organization’s field trips. When I was first given this task, I looked at it as more of a side responsibility or least as not requiring as much intentionality as that of the day-to-day happenings of the program. It was not until after I experienced a few of these outings through the eyes of a young person that I truly saw the value of a field trip. Our organization does at lea...Read More
12 Tips to Integrate Academic Enrichment In Afterschool
I have been working with after school programs across the country since 1998. And there are some things that I have learned that make doing academic enrichment activities more successful with kids after school. To meet the goals of this, we need after school not more school and kids should be engaged and having fun. Here are some helpful tips: Meet with your school(s) to find out what areas to focus on, where kids need more time, and how you can work together to align with what they are focusing...Read More
Celebrating Learning Opportunities in the Out-of-School Time Field
I woke up today, and while I was eating my English muffin, having coffee, and waiting for my own kids to finish getting ready for pre-school, I saw a Facebook post by an old friend from high school who is now a sixth-grade teacher. The post displayed a note on a white board, written by a student, and it read, “Mr. G is the best teacher ever!” In a time when there is so much discussion about holding teachers accountable and using test scores to distinguish “good” from R...Read More