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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Preparation
A combination of layovers and a tight schedule recently led me to be on four planes in 24 hours. It is spring, and it is the Midwest, so weather is frequently a factor, and I was fascinated to experience two of the pilots handle a similar situation in completely different ways. Pilot One, en route to Detroit from Indianapolis, checked in when we were about 25 minutes from landing, as pilots often do. He said hello, gave us a brief update on the goings-on in Detroit, and then before he signed off...Read More
The Story of Two Wes Moore’s: An Impactful Reading Experience
A few weeks ago, I heard a wonderful speaker at a conference I attended on transformative change. The speaker, Wes Moore, is author of the book, The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates. Immediately following his presentation, I logged onto my Amazon account and downloaded his book. I was about halfway through chapter two when I realized that this should be the topic of my next blog. If you have not heard of this book or read it, I highly recommend that you do. My guess is that as soon as you re...Read More
My Why: Our Kids Belong to All of Us
I have not yet worked full-time for a for-profit company. I’m steadily climbing to the mid-point in my professional career, and so far, it’s been a path from museums to schools to non-profits. I sometimes wonder why and how I got started on my work road, though as the child of two public school teachers, perhaps it’s not much of a stretch that I’m a professional out-of-school time youth instructor. Sometimes I wonder if I would be satisfied working in the corporate world,...Read More
Helping Kids Handle “Test Stress”
During the spring, kids across America are preparing for state-mandated tests. For many kids, that means extra stress as they complete additional worksheets, take practice tests, and worry about whether or not they will advance to the next grade level. We call this “test stress.” Test stress often leads to feelings of anxiety, nervousness, and fear, which can have a very negative impact on children’s ability to think clearly and to perform well on tests (there is actually brain...Read More
My Why: Closing the Opportunity Gap
I am driven by creating opportunities for young people, for closing the opportunity gap. I look at what elite private schools offer their young learners and then create, adjust, finagle, and hustle to try and ensure that students from less affluent public schools get the same chances to try new things. If a $25,000/year private school takes their Juniors snorkeling and kayaking, we need to offer the same to a kid from South LA. They may be our next Jacques Cousteau. If the best schools in wealth...Read More
My Why: Purpose
It’s really hard to pinpoint one purpose, cause, or belief that inspires me to do what I do. After thinking about this question, I realized that I have a different approach and reason for working on each project I am involved in, both professionally and personally. But, if I had to sum it up in one word, I would say the reason why I do what I do is “impact.” Professionally, as a researcher, this is particularly important to me because I spend most of my days on my computer anal...Read More
My Why: Darwin and Opportunity
Don’t worry, this isn’t about natural selection. It’s about a boy…named Darwin. But first, let me digress. As I wrote in a previous BOOST blog, my first teaching experience was in Cameroon. I was 21, no training, no textbooks, incomprehensible American accent. Not surprisingly (but not elegantly), I ended up yelling “I can’t take this &$(@” and stomping out of a room filled with 70 third graders. When I got back to NY, I was sure that teaching was no...Read More
Leveraging Wellness to Help Children Think Global and Act Local
Although the facts are alarming, conveying the importance of wellness to children can be challenging. Childhood obesity has almost tripled in children and adolescents in the past 30 years and today approximately one out of three children and adolescents in the United States is overweight or obese. Even more alarming, there are significant racial and ethnic disparities in obesity prevalence among U.S. children and adolescents. Research shows a strong link between a young person’s practice o...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
Identity Crisis
I was a “drama kid” growing up. Happily participating in every school play offered (except for the musicals—no singing for me!) from the time I was in about third grade until the time I graduated high school. I loved it, and even declared my future career choice was to become an actress. And while we had to audition for every play, I never worried because I always got a part—not always the lead, but always something. Until the time I didn’t. My senior year in high school I audi...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