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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Revising Beyond the Bell – A Few Takeaways

I began my career as a consultant and trainer for afterschool and expanded learning programs at PlusTime New Hampshire. While I was there, I had one resource I would turn to time and time again to support the programs I was working with: the Beyond the Bell Toolkit. As a consultant dealing with a variety of program needs and questions, the Toolkit was a great resource for me because there were so many tools available on topics ranging from management to evaluation to program design and delivery....Read More

Safe Schools: Utilizing Youth Leadership Programs to Develop a Safe School Climate

In developing school based approaches to create safe schools and positive school climates the single most important factor that youth leadership programs neglect to focus in on is the importance of developing a sense of belonging to a group identity for young people. We know that “After transition to middle school, peers become primary sources of support and motivation to achieve while the quality of teacher-student relationships tends to decline with time” (Wentzel, 1996). As we set...Read More

Making Connections- Youth Development and Academic Achievement

For many afterschool programs having an academic piece that really does make a difference in the lives of their students seems an elusive goal. With more and more stress being placed on afterschool programs demonstrating how their activities improve the academic achievement of their students, it has become increasingly important to understand what fosters this kind of success. One way to evaluate whether academic activities will produce the desired results is to look at them through the lenses o...Read More

Somewhere along the way we forgot that we are Superheroes…

I remember that it was during middle school that I began collecting Iron Man comic books. I don’t know if it was Tony Stark’s playboy swagger or his awesome suit that rocked me. Almost everyone has childhood memories of their superheroes and one’s immediate desire to “validate” why his/her superhero was the best. Personally, I’ve always been intrigued in how we create and identify with superheroes… especially during adolescence. It was not until recently...Read More