September 23, 2022

Y4Y is excited to introduce a new online professional development option for 21^st CCLCs. A Quality Program Quickstarter, or QPQ, is a self-paced learning module you can complete in about an hour. Each one highlights an essential practice for high-quality programs and includes a bundle of practical tools to take away and use. You can complete one module or all of them, in any order — and you can earn a certificate of completion for each one!

Keep reading to learn about four QPQ modules that are available right now. Find one that sparks your interest, sign into the Y4Y portal at y4y.ed.gov, and get professional development that fits your needs and your schedule. Here’s your menu of QPQ choices:

Building a Program Team

This module helps you consider who all your stakeholders are, how they’ll be represented on your team, and the different roles each can serve. Y4Y knows that sometimes this “jumping-off point” in 21^st CCLC programming can feel like arm-twisting, so Kathleen and her buddy, Michael, offer tips on identifying and recruiting the right people for an effective program team.

• Tip: Create a communications plan that includes meaningful orientation and regular, planned meetings in a setting that’s conducive to getting work done together. Transparency, a shared calendar, and attention to social components are smart strategies.
• Top reason to complete this module: By helping you keep team engagement top-of-mind, the hour or so you spend in Building a Program Team will help you assemble a diverse chorus of voices that will make your program sing.

Developing a Needs Assessment

This module walks you through the steps for conducting a comprehensive needs assessment that draws on a wealth of data. You’ll consider the purpose and benefits of conducting a needs assessment, strategies for an effective process, timing, and what types of data to include.

• Tip: An effective needs assessment offers valid evidence to help you identify pressing needs. That way, you can focus on what matters most. But don’t stop there! Go beyond identifying weaknesses to identify strengths as well, like highly engaged partners and families. This helps you use asset-based thinking (rather than deficit thinking) as your problem-solving lens.
• Top reason to complete this module: You’ll know how to develop a comprehensive needs assessment tailored to your program. Your findings will help you and your program team set priorities and determine next steps.

Community Asset Mapping

Are you looking for an effective way to identify, assess, and mobilize community resources to meet student needs and reach program goals? Community asset mapping may be the answer. This module guides you through the process and helps you uncover “hidden treasure” in your program’s own backyard.

• Tip: Use your program team to help you map potential assets like local businesses and nonprofits, experts, and school and family partners. Then use your needs assessment results, program goals, and other criteria (like cost and ease of use) to zero in on assets that are a good fit and can add value.
• Top reason to complete this module: You’ll learn an effective process for mapping available assets so that you don’t overlook hidden treasures like local expertise and nonprofit programs. You’ll also get tools and ideas to help you secure, engage, and respect program partners to ensure a sustainable program.

Intentional Activity Design

You can use the intentional activity design process to align your program’s activities with student needs and interests, program goals, and school-day learning.

• Tip: Use a variety of learning and engagement strategies like student choice, meaningful projects, experiential learning, field trips, social interactions, individual and group components, and makerspaces to design activities that delight students and help them discover new interests, skills, and strengths.
• Top reason to complete this module: You’ll be inspired to take a fresh look at your current approach to planning and designing program activities. Chances are, a few tweaks can yield big payoffs for you and your students.

Certificates? Yes, please!

As with Y4Y’s courses, completion of each QPQ module comes with the opportunity to download and print a certificate to demonstrate your professional growth and development. Of course, the results in your 21^st CCLC program will be an even greater demonstration of all you’ve gained!

September 23, 2022

There are some helpful takeaways from a report from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) on 10 years of systemic social and emotional learning implementation in urban settings. Keep reading to learn about these findings and Y4Y resources that can help guide social and emotional learning in your supportive 21^st CCLC program now and in future program years. 

Prioritizing social-emotional learning (SEL) is key to building a joyful, resilient program environment. That’s because SEL skills help us identify and manage our emotions, express empathy, form meaningful relationships, and cope with stress. When we prioritize social-emotional well-being for both educators and students, we can foster a culture in which everyone is better equipped to reach their full potential. 

Building a Network of Support

As students return to school this fall, the social and emotional aspects are just as important as gathering school supplies, meeting the new teacher(s), and finding out what’s being offered for lunch. More than ever, SEL is a key ingredient in addressing the top concerns for schools and out-of-school time (OST) programs. That includes physical wellness, mental wellness, emotional well-being, and academic recovery. OST programs have a key role to play in this effort. As your program partners with schools and families, you can strengthen relationships and provide a network of support that includes trusted adults and enriching experiences.

These three Y4Y tools can help you shape the priorities of your group effort in implementing social-emotional programming:

• Introduction to Social and Emotional Learning
• Integrating Social and Emotional Learning
• Mapping Assets for Social and Emotional Learning

Providing Comprehensive Support for Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)

The CASEL report mentioned above involved large, complex school systems in the country. Not only did these districts demonstrate it was possible to implement SEL systemically, but every district deepened and expanded SEL implementation from school to OST programs and families. CASEL identified four key elements that are necessary to comprehensively support quality SEL implementation throughout the system:

• Building foundational support and plan
• Strengthening adult SEL competencies and capacity
• Promoting SEL for students
• Reflecting on data for continuous improvement

The researchers examined how the districts they studied equipped themselves to sustain a commitment to SEL over the long term, even as the people and contexts within the district changed. CASEL identified six elements for sustaining SEL:

• Leaders model, cultivate, and elevate a shared vision for SEL.
• Core district priorities connect SEL to all departments and individuals, so everyone is invested.
• Schools have resources and pathways to guide SEL implementation, as well as room to innovate and customize SEL for their communities.
• SEL informs and shapes adult learning and staff culture and climate.
• Students, families, and communities are co-creators of the SEL vision, plans, and practices.
• External and internal communities of practice strengthen implementation.

These findings align with advice from Dr. Dave Pauneski, a senior behavioral scientist at Stanford University: “If we really want all students to leave school having developed certain academic, social, personal, and cultural capacities, we need to think really carefully about whether we as educators are creating the types of experiences that we know from research will help develop those capacities.”

Y4Y Resources Supporting SEL

These additional Y4Y resources can also support your efforts:

• Creating a Positive Learning Environment (Course)
• Drug and Alcohol Prevention Resources (Web page with links)
• Embedding Measurable Social and Emotional Learning in College and Career Readiness (Voices From the Field Interview/Podcast)
• Health and Wellness: Partnering With the School Day (Click & Go)
• Stages of Child and Adolescent Development (Course)
• Trauma-Informed Care (Click & Go)

September 23, 2022

Comparing yourself to others is, unfortunately, human nature. Often, we do it without even noticing. But when we do it in front of children, they notice. That’s because children are like sponges — they tend to soak up behaviors, attitudes, and ways of thinking. Imagine what may happen in the mind of a child when their adult role models openly criticize themselves. The child may wonder: “If they don’t believe they’re enough, should I be worried about how I perceive myself?”

One of this month’s Creative Program Ideas is to offer students a dedicated day (October 19, to be exact) to evaluate their life. Evaluate Your Life Day was inspired by a model of social behavior called Self-Evaluation Maintenance. This model suggests that if students have close friends or family members who “outperform” them in an area students don’t particularly pride themselves in, that connection boosts their self-esteem. But if a friend or family member outperforms a student in an area that matters a lot to the student — like skills in sports or the arts, or even attractiveness — then that relationship may take away from their self-esteem.

In other words, the Self-Evaluation Maintenance model suggests that a child’s self-evaluation is constantly interacting with how others close to them perform. That means each child’s identity and sense of self can be affected by how their peers perform.

What can your out-of-school time program do to help students find healthy ways to negotiate the natural human tendency to compare themselves to others? Here are some ideas.

All for One and One for All

To make sure that all your students feel like their success is possible, they must first feel like their voice matters. It’s important to incorporate regular self-reflection in a way that deters negative comparison. Y4Y’s Student Voice and Choice course takes a deep dive into maximizing student engagement and equipping staff with the tools they need to encourage a healthy self-image. When students feel heard, their confidence grows, and they’re more likely to develop a strong sense of self. You can nurture this strong sense of self by:

• Assessing student needs
• Conducting student interest surveys
• Encouraging goal setting
• Prioritizing student self-reflection

Setting the Scene for Reflection and Growth

Just as incorporating student voice and choice nurtures a healthy self-image, it’s also important to make sure your learning environment cultivates constructive attitudes. Creating a positive learning environment will, in turn, give your staff and students the setting they need to have open and honest conversations about self-reflection and self-love. The strategies in Y4Y’s Creating a Positive Learning Environment course can help your staff to create a safe space where students and families feel supported. Students in an open and positive environment are more likely to be supportive of each other. In fact, learning to celebrate one another’s successes is a great way to stop the “comparison habit” in its tracks.

When program staff members build positive relationships with and among students and create a nurturing environment where each student feels seen and heard, it sets the stage for students to discover their own strengths. Further, a safe, nurturing environment provides opportunities for them to develop those strengths. This is the path to establishing a generation of students with a healthy self-image and a productive attitude.

You can guide students along this path by teaching them that self-reflection is best practiced through a lens of positivity and self-compassion rather than constant comparison. Make sure your students appreciate that they are only ever striving to be their best selves.

September 23, 2022

The school dismissal bell is a phenomenon that should be studied. The second that the sweet chimes grace the ears of students, a sort of shapeshifting happens. Children and youth transform from slow-moving students to track stars hurtling toward the finish line! As they rush out the door to their buses, chaos ensues. Imagine a slow-motion replay of their exit as Johann Strauss’ “The Blue Danube,” plays in the background as they improvise their “school dismissal dance.” You get the picture.

But not all students head out the door. For some, their out-of-school time (OST) programs are just getting started. This is where the learning continues. This is where it’s all happening.

America After 3PM, a 16-year study published this spring by the Afterschool Alliance, confirms that parents and communities truly value OST programs. The findings below highlight some advantages of OST programs and ideas for making them even better. But wait — there’s more! You already have an OST program that supports student success and values family engagement. Why keep that all to yourself?! Read to the end for some tips on connecting with policy leaders in your school district, reaching out to colleagues in neighboring communities, and expanding your program’s outreach to spread the word on the value of your OST program.

Not Just “Another Brick in the Wall”

The OST programs of today are not where imagination and creativity go to die, and just like students, they’re not “one size fits all.” According to the Afterschool Alliance study, parents recognize a wide array of benefits:

• Technology is great, but unproductive screen time is a real problem. More than eight in 10 parents in the study agreed that afterschool programs provide opportunities for young people to live beyond the screen by learning life skills and building confidence. Sounds like a recipe for a productive member of society!

Try this: Not all screen time is created equal. Building digital literacy is important to ensure that students can successfully navigate the digital age. That’s why Y4Y created the Digital Literacy Click & Go especially for you. Learn about digital literacy and what your program can do to teach digital literacy skills to youth. Let’s face it — the last thing parents want to do is play the part of FBI agents when it comes to tracking down their children and monitoring their every move. Luckily, most of the parents surveyed (84%, to be exact) agreed that OST programs help to reduce risky behaviors.

• Physical activity and nutritious foods are super important factors for parents. In fact, these OST benefits were cited by 84% and 71% of parents surveyed, respectively. These factors only grow in importance when considering low-income families, families living in urban communities, and Black and Latinx parents.

Try this: See the Y4Y Health and Wellness: Partnering With the School Day Click & Go for tools and detailed information to help you make health and wellness a priority for you and your staff!

Let’s Give the People What They Want

You know that OST programs like yours provide students with the tools they need to be successful in and out of the classroom. However, there are areas of opportunity for OST programs to support families as well. Consider the following findings as you seek to fill any gaps you may have in your program to ensure that families feel valued!

• One of the most important factors in fostering student success is bringing families into the conversation. Children tend to model their attitudes and self-image after family members, so it’s critical that families feel included in their student’s OST journey. However, the Afterschool Alliance study found that only 43% of parents reported that their child’s program offered parent and family activities.

Try this: Y4Y recognizes that children thrive when families are valued, so we created an entire course on family engagement, complete with useful tools!

• Even though helping your students strengthen relationships in their community can also positively impact their “health outcomes, educational achievement, feelings of connectedness to the community, and economic prospects,” only 36% of the parents surveyed stated that their child’s OST program prioritizes this. Including service learning and community service is a great way to make sure your program is meeting the needs of students and their families.
• Some parents and families believe that enrolling their child in OST programs might expose their child to “negative influences, experiences, and values, such as bullying and peer pressure.” Unfortunately, only one in four parents said they feel there’s substantial information on OST programs within their community. Parents want to be in the know! Keep them updated with newsletters and social media, and encourage open communication about your program.

Shout It From the Rooftops

Wait, you’re telling me that you already have an OST program that caters to students’ needs, prioritizes family engagement, and provides opportunities for service learning — and you’re not performing a song and dance about it? The world needs to hear about your program! Thankfully, there are ways to make this happen.

Try this: Check Y4Y’s Strategic Partnerships course. You and your staff will get an in-depth understanding of how to identify strategic partners in your area and develop an outreach plan to engage them and to develop strong partnerships. To convey the value of your program, you’ll also need a killer elevator speech that lets potential partners know what your program is all about and why your program is the one they should work with! The Y4Y course also comes equipped with an abundance of tools that cover important topics such as community asset mapping, conveying needs to partners, and developing an effective memorandum of understanding. We know you’ve got a hectic schedule, so we tried our best to think of everything!

Out-of-school time programs really are a priceless gem that sets students up for success — and parents already agree! So use this knowledge to your advantage! An open and continuous dialogue between families and your staff will only enhance what your program can do. Furthermore, learning how to make the most of partnerships (and the resources and connections they provide) is a surefire way to take your program to the next level.