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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Love in Your Voice

It’s not always easy to be yourself. Maybe you can relate to this. I’m in a café with a cup of tea. It’s funny actually. There’s a trendy wooden table beside me. As I sit to write the first words of this blog project, in my head I hear the voices of writers I’m reading and speaker types famous for dumb one-liners. They are a crowded group in a room somewhere in my brain, an indecipherable rumble. “No Chad. Be you. Find your voice. Don’t write like them.&...Read More

A Case For That Softer Side Of Leadership

When we talk about leadership, and the skills needed to be an effective leader (which is a different conversation than what it means to effectively manage a team or project), we’ve only recently started to give proper space and focus around Emotional Intelligence and some of the “softer” skills that go into impactful and transformative leadership. But, what exactly is the softer side? Well, it’s the human side. More to the point: it’s the human-connecting-to-another-human side. There are a lot o...Read More

BOOST Vibes – Messages of Hope, Love & Inspiration

In recognition of the week we would have been together, we’ve asked the BOOST Leadership Team, BOOST Ambassadors, and Breakfast Club Bloggers to share messages of hope & inspiration with the field, to connect our community until we can gather together again.   ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ For many of us in the movement, the end of the day comes around 6PM, some a bit later, especially the family th...Read More

Using Mindfulness to Transform Self and Students

My love affair with mindfulness began innocently enough. I was working as a primary care provider in an internal medicine office at the time. I was a newly graduated PA and quickly became surprised by how many patients would come in to the office over and over again for the same problems. So many people were continuing to suffer despite getting all the best medical care that western medicine had to offer. What was missing? I was determined to find out. At the time, I had not even done yoga, much...Read More

Leading with Heart

I come from a family of immigrants, a fact that I will always take pride in. When my mom first immigrated to the US from the Philippines in 1978, she came as a nurse and settled in Chicago before ending up in Los Angeles. She spent over 30 years in the healthcare field as an RN here in LA at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and absolutely loved her job — it was her calling — until she retired a few years ago. It was her cousin, my Uncle Vic’s calling too. He followed the same pattern, ending up on th...Read More

In Praise of #Lovingdad

This blog was originally posted on the website Readsand.com and with permission from Breakfast Club Blogger, Marcus Struther. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ “I hope my son still kisses me when he’s 13!” These were the words said to me by a friend whose son was 2 at the time. I had just recently shared a story about my twin sons, who were about to turn 14 and currently being bullied at school because they kiss their dad. They we...Read More

All You Need Is Love

A couple of years ago I bought a new car. It came with a 6-month free trial for a satellite radio service. I don’t typically listen to the radio. I actually enjoy the moments of peace and quiet I can have when I’m driving. It’s an opportunity to think. But when my son Oliver is in the car with me, he always insists on having something to listen to. He is 11 years old, so his first choice is hip hop, but the language is a bit uncomfortable for me, so we tried the comedy channel, which was worse. ...Read More

Today Is The Only Day

Editors Note: This blog is being republished with permission from Erika Petrelli Bayh, Senior Vice President of Leadership Development at The Leadership Program. Thank you Erika for this very important message.  ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I’m so sad about the news that came out of Pittsburgh on October 27th and the straight-up hate that instigated it.  Especially in this month when we’ve been talking so much abou...Read More

A New Year’s Resolution

Today is the last day of 2017. It’s been a strange year. I feel like we’re living in some Bizarro World version of America. It’s as if one day we will wake up and realize this was all just a bad dream. A year ago I thought, “Well, I lived through eight years of W, I’ll get through this.” I didn’t think it would affect me personally, but it has. It does, every day. I live in Irvine, a diverse suburban community in which less than half of the population is white. A multitude of languages can be he...Read More

The Music of Life:  An Ode to the World

I was thinking recently about how two of my favorite sounds in the world are completely different. The first is the sound of birds singing and chirping—particularly the spring birds in the early morning. The second is the sound of an Indy race car as it speeds around the track. I love both of these sounds so much. Yet one is so gentle and the other is so strong. It seems like they should be in opposition to each other. But in reality I think they are examples of the stunning beauty of this world...Read More

Commencement

On behalf of the BOOST Breakfast Club, congratulations to all the graduates across the nation in 2017! This post from @erikap is so beautiful and well written, we wanted to #repost this heartfelt message. We believe the message is universal. Enjoy! As spring has officially given way to summer and academics have been replaced by pools and bike rides, I’ve been thinking about commencement speeches. Students across the country have been hearing them, whether graduating from high school or col...Read More

Just Love

I’m sitting here at my computer, with my four-year old son Dylan sitting at the table across from me. He’s on the other computer, playing Peppa Pig games. I’m supposed to be staring at my computer thinking about blog topics for the day, but instead I’m staring at him and thinking about how unbelievable he is. How smart (as he navigates the laptop like a professional, even with his tiny little fingers), how funny, how mischievous, how cunning, how playful, how joyful. I...Read More