English learners are a diverse group with diverse experiences and needs. While schools focus on teaching them English, afterschool programs can build on their strengths to address their social and emotional needs.
This article explores the partnership between the Baltimore County 4-H program and the Baltimore County Public Library, which forged a partnership to offer structured experiential programming opportunities to meet the afterschool needs of youth who visit their local library. Their experience suggests that libraries and youth development organizations can fruitfully collaborate to create sustainable quality afterschool programming.
If the schools can provide the instructional boost and afterschool can offer the engaging enrichment, students will have what they deserve: the best of both worlds.
A unique afterschool class in making comic strips and comic books, taught by a professional comic artist, encourages both literacy development and identity development in adolescent participants.
This paper outlines the need for sustainable, scalable afterschool computer science programs targeting girls and describes the development of one such curriculum. Evaluation research on girls’ learning of computer science and on the capacity of afterschool staff and organizations to provide computer science programming leads to our description of a research-based approach to sustaining and scaling the program nationally—an approach that other programs might use to expand their reach and impact.
Drugs and alcohol, free time and empty houses are readily available in affluent communities. But positive role models and meaningful activities are often in short supply.
In recent years, afterschool programs have come to be envisioned as sites for addressing the failure of urban schools to provide adolescents with the requisite skills and knowledge to participate in a rapidly shifting social, political, and economic landscape. The purpose and nature of such educational endeavors has taken many varied forms, as a growing number of stakeholders become invested in shaping the direction and implementation of afterschool programming. However, youth, as the recipients of these programs, have rarely been looked to as sources of experiential knowledge about the
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Katherine SchultzEdward BrockenbroughJaskiran Dhillon
Dance classes provide a model for afterschool and in-school education where multiple, “embodied” modes of teaching and learning enhance development and where risk-taking is rewarded rather than punished.
Adult facilitators in afterschool programs can work with LGBTQ youth to construct a safe space in which the youth can validate their identities in the process of doing literacy work.
This article addresses the ways in which an afterschool theater program creates an experience which builds confidence and encourages authentic work on the part of young people. It provides guidelines for practitioners for creating an atmosphere where learning can thrive.
This article from Afterschool Matters explores the challenge of engaging boys in writing. Loeper examines the difference between "engagement" and "flow", providing generalizable lessons for fostering engagement in out of school time activities.