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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Community Educators: What’s In a Name? A Lot, Actually
We are introducing the field to a new idea – the consideration that our afterschool staff are Community Educators at the heart of their work. To clarify, it is not a new idea but is a new way to think about the way we can refer to our staff. And we recently captured video stories of some inspiring Community Educators in California. Check out the first of the videos and see how Diego Arancibia, ASAPconnect Director, answered interview questions posed by Julie Sesser, ASAPconnect Specialist and Co...Read More
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
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
The Practice of Love and Forgiveness in the Lives of Youth
Editor’s Note: This blog was first published in 2002 in the EduCare’s Educator Institute Handbook and EduCare Foundation’s website. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The hearts of our children often ache from the hurts and hardships that they keep so hidden and secretive. We quietly hope that they can nonetheless move through life with a resilient spirit that can overcome the troubles they ...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
Speak on What We Do! Youth Development is for You!
I believe you cannot learn youth development without experiencing it. What I mean by “youth development” is distinct from “education.” Reflecting on nearly 19 years in our field of many names, I embrace Expanded Learning here in California as it embodies the heart of our work. When I hear Michael Funk, Director of the Expanded Learning Division at the California Department of Education, talk about the importance of love, I feel at home. It inspires me to reach out to those of you who can relat...Read More
Finding Some Extraordinary In Your Ordinary
What does it mean to find the extraordinary within the ordinary? One of my favorite quotes is by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (author of The Little Prince, among others), where he says: “A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.” Are you someone who sees rock piles, or do you see cathedrals? To find the extraordinary within the ordinary, you have to see it. And to see it, you have to look for it. And to look...Read More
Do you love afterschool? Proclaim it loudly!
In partnership with the Afterschool Alliance, we hope you’ll pass this along to parents and friends to help raise awareness for afterschool programs by writing a short letter to your local newspaper. This is a repost from the Afterschool Snack blog. Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us at the BOOST office! “This year, my Valentine is to a program that makes all the difference for me and for my family,“ So began West Valley City, Utah, resident Amanda Owens in her Salt La...Read More
Magical Leadership
The past few weeks have been very fun and proud for me, as this baby of mine, this pet project, this seed of an idea that was planted more than three years ago, finally saw the sunlight. The interactive journal—the book born out of a weekly blog that I write—On Wings & Whimsy: Thoughts on Finding the Extraordinary Within the Ordinary—was published as the first product of The Leadership Program for 2017. It’s a journal designed for personal reflection and development, rooted in stories ...Read More
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
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