March 10, 2023

Each generation has its challenges, but it’s no secret that today’s youth have become quite the softball stars, given the curveballs thrown their way. As humans, we’re designed to adapt, and no one does it quite like Gen Z. We’re not sure what’s in their water, but one thing is clear: This generation is driven by a desire to address social problems. Why not use that drive to your (and their) advantage? Cultivating a spirit of philanthropic entrepreneurship might not be part of your current game plan for student engagement, but Y4Y’s new Youth in Action course will get you and your staff excited about the possibilities.

The Name of the Game

The term “social entrepreneurship” might sound like a totally different ballgame than the one you’re playing, but it’s in the same ballpark as service learning and project-based learning. Social entrepreneurship blends a business goal of providing products or services with the desire to support a cause that improves the lives of others. It’s not a totally new concept. For example, over 100 years ago in Pennsylvania, this ideal inspired Milton Hershey to build a model community around his factory. So why pass the bat to your students? Here are three good reasons:

• Social entrepreneurship is a natural tool for student engagement. It taps into their interests and their desire to make a positive difference in the world.
• It benefits students. For example, projects that combine concepts from entrepreneurship and service learning let students practice real-world 21^st century skills like creativity, problem-solving, collaboration, and communication. Experiences with social entrepreneurship also help students develop important mindsets like the value of hearing multiple perspectives and the importance of empathy when developing solutions.
• It benefits society. After all, you’re preparing the leaders, creators, and decision-makers of tomorrow!

The Introduction section of the Youth in Action course not only delves into the history and benefits of social entrepreneurship. It also shows how it can build the top workforce skills your students need to stay ahead of the curve.

Batter Up!

You need a team that’s fired up and ready to engage students in service learning and entrepreneurship activities, and that’s where the Coaching My Staff section of this course comes in handy. It provides ready-to-go trainings and tools — and it guides you through the steps to creating a professional development plan that’s a good fit for your program. You and your staff will be ready to start swinging in no time!

It doesn’t stop there, though. After staff have stepped up to the plate, they’ll need practical strategies to help students hit that home run. That’s where the Implementation Strategies section of this course comes in. You and your colleagues who complete this section of the course learn how to:

• Describe the process for implementing a social entrepreneurship activity.
• Facilitate social conversations amongst students.
• Guide students as they implement their plans.

As you’ll notice while making your way through this course, it’s less about being the “sage on the stage” and more about being the “guide on the side.” If you or your staff aren’t sure what that might look like, don’t worry. You’ll get some practice scenarios, planning checklists, driving questions, and more.

Hit It Out of the Park!

As consumers, we’re often told that we “vote” with our dollar, meaning the businesses we choose to support should reflect the kind of world we want to live in. Today’s students already have an intrinsic desire to leave this world better than they found it. Putting youth in action so they can act on their best impulses is sure to be a grand slam!

March 10, 2023

Do you remember that self-improvement promise you made to yourself at the beginning of the year? Or the follow-through that may or may not have petered out by now? Perhaps you made multiple New Year’s resolutions, and maybe one mentioned overcoming procrastination. Hey, we get it — it’s only March, but it’s been a busy year already, and it’s difficult to find time to plan for the long term. However, procrastination now will only lead to more stress later. So do yourself a favor: Don’t wait until the last day of school to start planning your summer learning program! For bite-size learning that will get you summer-ready in eight weeks or less, try Y4Y’s Quality Program Quickstarters (QPQs). Topics include everything from building a program team to mapping community assets. The countdown to summer starts now!

Pick a Card, Any Card

You can choose from five QPQ’s. If deciding where to start feels like picking a card at random from a street magician, fear not! Let us break it down for you:

• Spring is the perfect time to start thinking about who you want on your team this summer. Building a Program Team walks you through the steps for gathering key stakeholders, managing communications, and working together effectively.
• There are plenty of resources in your community waiting to be uncovered. Locating and securing them is one of the most important things you and your program team can do to help meet the needs of students and families. Community Asset Mapping shows you how.
• Needs shift over time as new students and families enter your program, schools enact new programs and priorities, and community circumstances change. Reassessing those needs should be part of your yearly checklist. Haven’t gotten to it yet? Check out Conducting a Needs Assessment.
• Maybe you’ve already assessed student and family needs. Intentional Activity Design builds your understanding of how to design activities that address those needs. Purposeful design helps everyone reach their goals.
• Once you’ve put in the work, you’ll want to spread the word about your amazing program! From tailoring your message to reach a specific audience to discovering tools that’ll help you do so, Marketing and Outreach provides practical guidance on taking your program to the masses.

Yep, There’s a Tool for That

A Y4Y motto is “We never provide a key strategy without also providing a tool to help you get it done.” That’s why each QPQ comes with a curated list of Y4Y tools to send you on your way. Here are some “fan favorites” (one from each module):

• There are a myriad of methods and channels for communicating with and providing feedback to program staff. The Effective Workplace Communication Training to Go is a downloadable, customizable PowerPoint that shows how it’s done!
• Asset mapping is a helpful process, but you may be wondering where to begin. Try the Community Resource Map tool. It breaks down potential resources into distinct groups.
• To properly conduct a needs assessment for your summer program, you need input from students and families. The Y4Y Family Engagement Survey provides the right start.
• The Intentional Activity Design Planner provides a template for an activity plan based on SMART goals. Not sure what SMART goals are? No worries: It’s covered in the module.
• A good social media campaign can help you recruit students and community partners to your summer program. The Five W’s of a Social Media Campaign easily lays it out!

With each QPQ module, you’ll gain vital information (and tools) that will set your summer program soaring. Don’t wait — if you devote just a little time each day, a daunting task suddenly seems much more manageable. Ready, set, go!

August 6, 2021

A sense of purpose drives most success in life, whether that success is as a parent, a home health aide or president of the United States. By tapping into that human instinct in every one of your students, you can make an immeasurable impact on their lives. Two Y4Y courses, Citizen Science and Civic Learning and Engagement, offer ways to help students find a path to community participation that can give them a sense of greater purpose well beyond their years in your program.

Citizen science means that everyday members of the community can make impactful contributions to scientific advances. This crowdsourcing of information takes little training or even deep understanding of all the principles at work, though often participants in a citizen science project gain significant knowledge through their involvement. Have your students felt like bystanders for the last 18 months, helpless as a new virus wreaked havoc on the world? Biomedical scientists are always looking for volunteers to advance their work. CitizenScience.org has a full list of projects soliciting help in all aspects of COVID-19. Explore many other topics, ranging from studying water quality to space feature hunting, at CitizenScience.gov or through your own internet searching. Just keep these simple tips and tools at hand:

• Discover what your students are passionate about and where they most want to make a difference. It might be in your backyard or on a global scale.
• Whenever possible, align student interests with school-day curricula, using Y4Y’s Assessing Alignment Efforts tool.
• Reflect on your impact together in a structured way. You can draw inspiration from former successful projects by NASA, Astro Quest or this engaging TED Talk on citizen science.
• The Y4Y Citizen Science Research Brief offers more detail on the potential impact on your program.

In a similar way, Y4Y’s Civic Learning and Engagement course offers helpful guidance for channeling students’ interest in their community into meaningful contribution. Youth of today are increasingly engaged in the world around them. Whether this is because of social media, cameras on cell phones that make more human experiences universally accessible, or a less tangible raising of collective consciousness, there’s no denying that young people today are aware of the problems around them and they’re eager to fix them. Public figures like climate change activist Greta Thunberg, education advocate Malala Yousafzai, and gun control activist David Hogg may very well reflect the passion and drive you see in the students in your program.

It’s never too early to start sowing those seeds of community purpose in your 21^st CCLC program. Start by

• Familiarizing yourself with child development characteristics and youth development stages you can tap into to spark childhood interest in community.
• Considering the potential partners in your community.
• Brainstorming civic engagement topics with your students.
• Checking out the rest of Y4Y’s tools for guiding students through civic learning and engagement.

Citizen science and civic engagement aren’t mutually exclusive. You may opt to offer both kinds of opportunities to your students to expand the breadth of your program. Studies tell us that they’ll expand their skills, feel empowered, grow into responsible and productive citizens, and even live longer by establishing the practice of being contributors. Most famously, the Harvard Grant study, now 83 years running, demonstrates that “people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community are happier, they’re physically healthier and they live longer than people who are less well connected,” according to Harvard psychiatrist Robert Waldinger. Your program, along with the school-day, may be the first communities your students are experiencing. Help them expand that vision of community beyond your walls, your city and even the country. Your students will benefit, and so will the world.

July 19, 2021

Many programs are concerned that creating a more inclusive program means having to give up some favorite activities, but this isn’t the case. Discover in your program how inclusion means addition, not subtraction.

Located in Boston, the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST) developed the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework. The idea is to build enough flexibility into goals, assessments, methods and materials to minimize barriers and maximize learning for all students. By adopting UDL in your program, you can address your students’ diverse cultural and linguistic needs; disabilities; and differences in privilege — not with numerous, complicated initiatives, but a single overarching program design approach, summarized in this brief video. Greater equity is the result.

Consider the basics of the UDL guidelines, and what this design approach means in your 21^st CCLC program for adding opportunities for inclusion of students with disabilities, without subtracting any opportunities from students without disabilities. In all you do, you should provide multiple means of the below elements.

Engagement — The “Why” of Learning

In your program, you’ll be able to offer multiple “why” choices by

• Understanding the laws that drive full inclusion. See Y4Y’s brief, Legal Foundations of Inclusion.
• Building a culture of empathy and community. Y4Y’s Socially Responsible Language tool is a must for framing language and perspective!
• Getting staff and partners on board. Use Y4Y’s Building an Inclusive Environment by Roles tool.
• Appreciating that each student should have their own, unique goals in your program and beyond.
• Offering student voice and choice in everything you do, to every one of your students. Check out Y4Y’s full student voice and choice toolkit if you need help.
• Remembering that some students may have more difficulty expressing that voice. Y4Y’s Training to Go on Understanding and Responding to Students With Disabilities can help you uncover that voice.

Representation — The “What” of Learning

In your program, you’ll be able to offer multiple “what” choices by

• Taking advantage of any existing documentation that can help you develop viable choices. Y4Y’s tool for interpreting common Individualized Education Program (IEP) sections can help.
• Expanding activities with Y4Y’s tool that steps you through a sample opportunity to implement UDL.
• Understanding a range of abilities from a neurological development standpoint, as addressed in Y4Y’s Developmental Stages of Reading Tool. The full Literacy Toolkit offers expert guidance that can help you apply UDL to literacy.
• Remaining faithful to your needs assessments as established in your RFP and each program year. Y4Y’s Mapping Needs to Activities tool can guide you to address the academic subjects requiring your program’s focus, and the depth and breadth of that need. Just as a high rate of English learners in your program will drive fundamental literacy activities, a high rate of learning disabilities in your community impacts other types of academic supports.

Action & Expression — The “How” of Learning

In your program, you’ll be able to offer multiple “how” choices by

• Considering universal accessibility to make program activities authentic and relevant to each student. Check out Y4Y’s Environmental Checklist to get you started.
• Embracing group work that gives everyone an important role and plays to each student’s strengths. Y4Y’s Selecting Student Roles for Group Work can help.
• Recognizing the value of project-based learning (PBL) as an instrument for student-driven achievement at many levels. Y4Y’s PBL Diagram and Classroom Facilitator Packet can set you on this path.
• Adopting the design thinking process in your STEAM enrichment activities. This process expands on PBL by putting students behind the wheel of problem discovery. This accommodates more complete inclusion by promoting both agency and collaboration. Learn more about this approach with Y4Y’s Design Thinking Framework: Project Planning Template.

Horace Mann said, “Every addition to human knowledge is an addition to human power.” When you add inclusion by way of UDL, you’re adding to your program’s power. The only things you’re subtracting are feelings of exclusion and isolation.

July 19, 2021

There are many moving parts to your program. Here are some quick and easy ways to support your staff and keep a light but steady grip on your program and its success.

Your Best Resources Are Your Human Resources

The term “human resources” is so common that we don’t often stop to think about the meaning. If your program isn’t doing everything in its power to invest in staff, it’s guaranteed that you’re not getting the most you can out of your greatest asset. There are many ways you can invest in staff. Here are just a few:

• Provide direct benefits. Many programs are revisiting their funding, budget and payroll structures with added funds from the American Rescue Plan Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ARP ESSER III). Passing some of that funding on to staff directly demonstrates that their nose-to-the-grindstone grit and perseverance throughout the pandemic hasn’t gone unnoticed or unappreciated.
• Support professional development. Making full use of free resources like Y4Y’s dozens of Trainings to Go and online courses means offering staff paid time to hone their knowledge and skills. Increased personal investment in your program and improved job performance are sure to result.
• Create opportunities to recharge. Students aren’t the only ones in the process of recovery. As the old saying goes, you can’t squeeze blood from a turnip. Many 21^st CCLC educators feel like root vegetables right now. A year of virtual programming has permanently blurred that line between home and work, making it all the more difficult to recharge at home. Now that programs are back in person, leadership needs to insist that staff give themselves the quiet or family time they deserve. As your program is able, you can even build on this effort by offering staff activities around socializing, mindfulness or whatever they express an interest in doing together as a team.
• Delegate and empower. While the above offer ways to give something to your staff, don’t underestimate the ways your staff and your program can benefit from taking—with the right kind of framework. Take staff’s thoughts, ideas and advice about new policies or activities. And take their offers to show initiative on projects or committees. The good news is: This kind of taking also builds confidence, rapport, skills and passion in your greatest resources.

For more ideas on this important topic, be sure to check out Y4Y’s Employee Retention Training to Go.

That’s a Great-Looking Staff. Whatever Will You Do With Them?

Moving beyond your methods for valuing and keeping the staff you have, good 21^st CCLC management also means having a program culture and policies in place that allow them to realize their full potential. How will you work as a cohesive team to achieve optimal outcomes?

• Centralize. Has one member of your staff chased down access to online resources to align with the school day? Has she shared that access with her peers? Has another forged a partnership in the community for his high school students’ tech club but hasn’t had a chance to tell your sister sites about it? Are student files, program policies and schedules in SharePoint or a central, protected website so that any information that might be needed is appropriately accessible to everyone in your program? You can all work more efficiently and effectively by pooling your information and making access simple. Centralizing can also benefit your program fiscally. You might get bulk discounts from partners, or have materials you no longer need but another site can use.
• Communicate. Many of the concerns around centralizing can be addressed when you implement adequate communication methods. Debriefs provide an excellent opportunity for in-the-moment “what worked, what didn’t” conversations, which are essential to continuous improvement. Weekly team meetings that share important and not-so-important updates and solicit contributions from every member will ensure no resource goes unused. An open-door policy by leadership and opportunity for anonymous feedback are critical. Not only will both parties benefit from an easy mode of exchange; the policy will reassure staff of their value.
• Continuous improvement. Your program is bound to enjoy some degree of improvement with efforts to invest in staff, centralize information and resources, and communicate generously. But don’t skip those management steps and choices that tie continuous improvement into the fiber of your leadership. Follow up on those passions of staff to discover how you can support progress. Put structures in place that channel all feedback, even when roadblocks are encountered, into a “lessons learned” program bank. And, of course, offer everyone, including your top employees, constructive suggestions and opportunities to improve their practice. Maybe they’d like professional development in an area of need in the program or in a topic of interest to them. Check out the Y4Y Professional Learning Feedback Survey as just one example of a tool for using staff feedback for your continuous improvement.

Strong 21^st CCLC management means loosening your grip enough to give staff the freedom to be effective while holding them fast to shared goals for your students. Now is a great time to brush up, or to bring along new leadership, on basic strategies with Y4Y’s Human Resources and Managing Your 21^st CCLC Program courses.