An annual conference gathers young Native Americans from several states and many tribes to celebrate their culture, deal with issues they face in their communities, and get involved in tribal and state political issues.
A program that combines sports and literature can improve students’ reading, writing, and comprehension skills. What’s more, it promotes children’s personal development and selfesteem, and forges a link between sports, literature, and their daily lives.
OST programs can be part of the solution to the growing epidemic of child obesity. A first step is to understand current practices and learn about supports for—and barriers to—providing nutritious foods in afterschool programs.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Jessica WiechaGeorgia HallEllen GannettBarbara Roth
The 2000 Census indicates a significant increase in foreign-born and first-generation students in public schools, at a time when multicultural communities are challenging long-held notions about civic participation in America. This study of Teen Educators Advocating for Community Health (TEACH) illustrates how an innovative afterschool program attempted to nurture social capital and a sense of belonging in immigrant youth. Drawing on Robert Putnam’s distinction between the bonding and bridging forms of social capital, the study argues that afterschool programs can help immigrant youth develop
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.
This paper will provide program leaders and staff with a brief overview of what is known about physical activity in afterschool programs. Then, by integrating experience in afterschool programming with expertise in health promotion, physical education, physical activity promotion, public health, and the social psychology of sport and physical activity, we will present strategies and recommendations for promoting physical activity in afterschool settings.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Aaron BeighleMichael BeetsHeather ErwinJennifer HubertyJustin MooreMegan Stellino
Afterschool Matters interviews Kennise Farrington, a September 2009 senior at John Bowne High School in Queens, out-of-school time rowing in Meadow Lake, Queens.
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Kennise Farrington
resourceresearchProfessional Development, Conferences, and Networks
Although cooperative, interorganizational networks have become a common mechanism for delivery of public services, evaluating their effectiveness is extremely complex and has generally been neglected. To help resolve this problem, we discuss the evaluation of networks of community-based, mostly publicly funded health, human service, and public welfare organizations. Consistent with pressures to perform effectively from a broad range of key stakeholders, we argue that networks must be evaluated at three levels of analysis: community, network, and organization/participant levels. While the three
Exposing American K-12 students to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) content is a national initiative. Game Design Through Mentoring and Collaboration targets students from underserved communities and uses their interest in video games as a way to introduce science, technology, engineering, and math topics. This article describes a Game Design Through Mentoring and Collaboration summer program for 16 high school students and 3 college student mentors who collaborated with a science subject matter expert. After four weeks, most students produced 2-D video games with themes based
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Neda KhaliliKimberly SheridanAsia WilliamsKevin ClarkMelanie Stegman
In April 2009, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science (DMNS) opened an innovative human biology exhibition with a focus on health: Expedition Health. The visitor experience is themed around a climb up Mount Evans—one of Colorado’s well known “fourteeners” (14,258 feet in elevation). The exhibition utilizes nine real‐life Coloradans as “expedition buddies”—virtual learning companions who accompany visitors throughout the exhibition. The exhibition combines hands‐on, fullbody activities and real anatomical specimens throughout five different specialized learning environments. These environments
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Denver Museum of Nature & ScienceSteven YalowitzClaudia Figueiredo
Informal science educators play a key role in promoting science literacy, safety, and health by teaching pesticide toxicology to the large, at-risk Latino farmworker population in the United States (US). To understand the experiences of informal science educators and the nature of farmworker education, we must have knowledge of farmworker educators' beliefs, yet little is known about these beliefs and how beliefs about teaching, pesticide risk, and self-efficacy might influence teaching environments and practices and potentially inform the field of informal science education. In this
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Catherine LePrevostMargaret BlanchardW. Gregory Cope
The article discusses how undergraduate science students became docents for "The Genomic Revolution" exhibit at the Fernbank Museum of Natural History in Atlanta, Georgia. According to the article, a docent is one who serves as a connection between the museum and the attendees and acts as an interpreter of the collection for the visitors. Undergraduate students were recruited from schools in the Atlanta, Georgia area including the Georgia Institute of Technology, Emory University, and Spellman College. The docent training program that would cover the genetic principles of the exhibit, the Peer
DATE:
TEAM MEMBERS:
Robert PyattTracie RosserKelly Powell