This article describes Youth as Resources, a nationwide initiative involves youth and adults as equal partners in projects that improve community life. Some examples of the projects include the Rural Renewable Energy Alliance, which engages teenagers to install solar heating in low income homes, and the Haydenville Preservation Committee, which implemented neighborhood cleanup and landscaping projects in rural Ohio.
This article describes the Multimedia Arts Education Program (MAEP), an ongoing, intensive after school computer-mediated art technology program begun in 1996 by the Tucson Pima Arts Council (TPAC) in Tucson, Arizona. This five-semester program targets at-risk middle school youth from disadvantaged families. Students worked with professional artist/teachers, learning to do computer graphics and publishing, language arts and word processing, computer animation and video production.
A vivid portrait of a little girl, her mother, and their experience at a neighborhood agency demonstrates how stories taken from the field can illustrate the power of peer education and motivate staff toward more inspired educational after school programming.
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.
Children thrive individually when they feel part of a group. Thus every youth organization must intentionally create an agency culture that promotes positive values and relationships. Using social group work theory and her own experience as an agency director, the author proposes a Model for Common Humanity: nine principles that can guide the fostering of an agency milieu.
At a family service agency in the North Bronx, staff members have drawn a vital connection between community and literacy. The authors explain how their literacy program evolved from a basic tutoring opportunity into a curriculum using themes and information gleaned from the young participants’ immediate community surroundings.
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.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Jessica WiechaGeorgia HallEllen GannettBarbara Roth
Both scholarly literature and popular media often depict predominantly negative and one-dimensional images of boys, especially African-American boys. Predictions of these boys’ anticipated difficulties in school and adulthood are equally prevalent. This paper reports qualitative research that features case studies of nine urban boys of color, aged nine to eleven, who participated in an afterschool program where they learned to create digital multimedia texts. Drawing on an analysis of the children’s patterns of participation, their multimodal products, and their social and intellectual growth
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Glynda HullNora KenneyStacy MarpleAli Forsman-Schneider
Positive behavior support, with its emphasis on teaching desired actions rather than punishing undesirable actions, can be a powerful tool for managing young people’s behavior. This article examines its' application in afterschool settings.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Brian McKevittJessica DempseyJackie TernusMark Shriver
Emphasizing the intersection of policy and politics, this paper uses Theda Skocpol’s polity-centered approach (1992) to analyze two key moments in the history of the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) program: 1998, when the program’s budget grew from $40 million to $200 million, and 2003, when President Bush attempted to cut the program’s budget from $1 billion to $400 million. A thorough understanding of this history can help afterschool advocates successfully respond to President Obama’s recent proposal to dramatically change the 21st CCLC program once again.