Afterschool Matters talked with Sylvia Lyles, Ph.D., program director of the Academic Improvement Programs Group in the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, DC., about providing high-quality learning experiences for children and youth.
Principal involvement is a critical component of schoolbased afterschool programming. A logic model of six potential roles principals can play in afterschool programs offers a basis for consensus between principals and afterschool coordinators on this vital issue.
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.
This article follows the New York State Afterschool Network (NYSAN) as it develops a framework for program quality and related assessment tools. It suggests ways in which this framework can be useful to afterschool practitioners, technical assistance professionals, intermediaries, and policymakers nationwide.
The article focuses on an educational program called Game Design Through Mentoring and Collaboration. The program is a partnership between McKinley Tech and George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax, Virginia. Through this program the teachers ensure students understand the pathways needed for participation in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) enterprise. Kevin Clark, is the principal investigator of the program.
This essay presents one practitioner's journey into the field of after school education. It encourages practitioners to maintain their passion while seeking ways to further examine their practice in the pursuit of excellence.
At the 1939–1940 New York World's Fair, several thousand boys and girls, all members of a growing national network of high school science and engineering clubs, displayed their science fair projects and conducted live experiments to more than 10 million visitors. Housed in the building sponsored by the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company, their exhibits depicted a wide range of scientific phenomena. They also represented the conflicting values of science educators and industrialists about the societal worth of science education. In some instances, students' projects and laboratory
This qualitative study examined the perspectives of African American parents as it pertained to informal science education. The following questions guided this study: (1) What are the desires of African American parents/guardians with respect to informal science programs and experiences for their children?; (2) What happens in Jordan Academy, an enrichment program that has successfully recruited African American students?; and (3) What are the African American parents'/guardians' opinions of the program? We inductively and deductively analyzed classroom observations; academy curriculum; photos
FUSE is a new kind of interest-driven learning experience being developed by researchers at Northwestern University with the goal of engaging pre-teens and teens in science, technology, engineering, arts/design, and mathematics (STEAM) topics while fostering the development of important 21st century skills including adaptive problem solving, creativity, self-directed learning, persistence, and grit. FUSE is now offered in-school, after-school, and on the weekends at 23 different locations in the greater Chicago area. Through FUSE, teens can "hang out, mess around and geek out" with the FUSE set of challenges, the core activities in our Studios. Each challenge uses a leveling up model from gaming and is carefully designed to engage teens in different STEAM topics and skills sets. FUSE currently has 21 challenges in areas such as robotics, electronics, biotechnology, graphic design, Android app development, 3D printing and more. New challenges are always in development. FUSE Challenges can be tackled individually or in groups. Professional scientists, engineers, advanced undergraduates, and graduate students are available as mentors and provide a real-world connection to the concepts learned and practiced through the challenges. All challenges result in digital media artifacts that are shared online for peer review, remixing, expert judging, and collaboration. We designed the FUSE program to appeal to the interests of all young people, especially those youth who are not interested in or don't think of themselves as "good at" math and science in school. FUSE challenges provide a new way to explore science, technology, engineering, arts and design, and math in a fun and relaxed way. FUSE is based on many years of research in the learning sciences by faculty in School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University.