February 17, 2021

Sometimes we know exactly what we want. Sometimes we know exactly what we don’t want. In your program, you can avoid the ho-hums between these extremes with Y4Y’s new course on student voice and choice. But remember: your students need more than just a voice to be inspired. They need your help finding that voice. After all, those frontal lobes are working overtime to develop right now!

Your adventures in student voice and choice begin with a tour of the Y4Y Musicfest with young Stevie. You’ll learn to

• Prepare staff at the Rock and Roll Stage.
• Create a safe environment for student voice at the Country Stage.
• Capture student voice and choice at the Pop Stage.
• Embed student voice and choice throughout each activity at the R&B/Soul Stage.
• Assess and reflect on implementation at the Jazz Stage.

After completing the Implementation Strategies portion of the course, you’ll receive an Advanced Level certificate and be able to

• Define student voice and choice.
• Describe how to create a program environment that honors student voice and choice.
• Develop a program schedule of activities that honor student voice and incorporate academic needs.
• Utilize strategies for honoring student choice.
• Access tools and resources for increasing student voice and choice in your program.

Leaders who opt to complete the “Coaching My Staff” portion of the course will earn a Leadership Level certificate and be able to

• Train staff to integrate student voice and choice across program activities.
• Create a professional learning plan for staff.
• Use effective coaching techniques while implementing the professional learning plan.

You’ll find the downloadable, customizable tools with this course to be inspired and inspiring!

• Start with the Student Voice and Choice Implementation Checklist.
• Go to tools like the Activity Choice Form and the Concentric Circles Discussion Format for tips on collecting student voice.
• The Activity Choice Form and the Example Activity Schedule will help you ensure student choice.
• Assess your efforts with the Fidelity of Implementation Checklist.

Confucius famously noted that if you choose a job you love, you’ll never have to work a day in your life. What he meant was, you might work hard, but you’ll enjoy it more if it’s work of your own choosing. Offering the at-risk students in your program a voice and choice is the educational equivalent of this sage advice. Your 21^st CCLC program should be painlessly fun and enriching even as your students put forth their best effort. This new course will set you well on your way while having your own fun at the Y4Y Musicfest!

December 14, 2020

Whether in your program or through previous experiences, every member of your staff is likely to have had the opportunity to know and work with a student with a disability. But one or two experiences, while they may provide some valuable perspective, don’t provide enough knowledge to help you establish a truly inclusive program culture. Y4Y’s new course, Including Students With Disabilities, can help your program lay the foundation for a welcoming environment for all.

The host, Gail, will take you around the “All-In” Playground, where there’s something for everyone. Each jungle gym or playing field presents a different learning opportunity to build your program’s inclusion efforts. You’ll learn about six implementation strategies:

1. Embrace inclusion as a core value.
2. Know federal laws and guidelines on inclusion.
3. Build a foundation for including students with disabilities.
4. Build relationships with families and students.
5. Design an inclusive program.
6. Implement with fidelity.

Watch for helpful features throughout the course, such as a glossary, help line, menu, resources, inclusion guides and tips.

For more advanced learning, complete the Coaching My Staff section of the new course. Discover the three fundamental reasons for professional development around inclusion and advance your knowledge of the mechanics of developing or improving your inclusion efforts.

Don’t forget to peruse the comprehensive tools that accompany the new course. Just a few highlights include

• Including Students With Disabilities Planning Checklist to keep you on track
• Federal State Law Fillable Document to ensure your understanding of relevant state and local laws
• Activity Planner to compare possible design strategies
• Common Acronyms to familiarize yourself with much of the language around inclusion
• Family Engagement Activities Checklist to be sure you’re addressing unique needs of families.

As with any Y4Y course, you’ll earn a certificate of completion for each section, but be sure you’re logged into your account to save your progress! Besides that piece of paper, you’ll come away with confidence in your ability to make all students feel welcome in your program, a better understanding of how and why that’s possible, and best of all, the warm feeling of doing right by each and every student in your program.

March 18, 2020

Literacy is an area where your 21^st CCLC program can dramatically enrich and improve the lives of your students. But where in the world is the professional learning to help you achieve your goals? Look no further! Y4Y has updated its Literacy course, with four objectives in mind: assess students’ literacy needs, design and facilitate literacy activities that align with those needs, use strategies to increase the time students spend reading and writing after the school day, and implement literacy activities with fidelity. Join the course tour guide, Will, as each of 11 key strategies will take you to a different country throughout this travel-themed course. Buckle up for an engaging trip around the world!

How might key strategies look when literacy is your focus?

• To start, your literacy program team may include some new members, such as a librarian from your public library and reading specialist.
• Qualitative data will be as important to your needs assessments as quantitative data, since qualitative data gives people room to communicate freely and add details.
• Partnership assets may not be dramatically different through the literacy lens. On the contrary, you might discover some of your best partners already have literacy initiatives in place that you can tap into, such as book giveaways or English as a Second Language (ESL) volunteer tutoring programs.
• Bear in mind that SMART goals will have to be set for the program level and for activities.
• Just like partnerships, logistics may not change dramatically when literacy is at the heart of your planning, but here again, there may be space or budgeting opportunities and challenges that are unique to your literacy activities.
• Intentional design of literacy activities will take into account the amount of enrichment versus intervention that may be called, for based on your student-level data.
• Recruitment of students should involve general outreach to the community. Also, asking for referrals and good advertising from school-day educators will be crucial.
• Whether your current staff has strong literacy skills, or you’re poised to hire new staff or you’re looking for other stakeholders to fill gaps, strong literacy skills (and the ability to teach those skills) are desirable as you’re choosing adults to interact with your students.
• Consider the possible challenges around adult literacy when it comes to your family engagement efforts.
• Helping your students understand the rubric used to measure their literacy progress is an important step in implementing with fidelity. Unlike math, where an answer is either right or wrong, literacy skills can seem mysterious to students. There can be multiple ways to write a good (or bad) paragraph, for example. Providing a rubric with clear measures can remove some of the mystery (and anxiety) for students.
• When your organization is mindful of these steps in literacy programming, success is the final stop in your literacy tour. That means it’s time to celebrate!

Enjoy your worldwide tour of all four components of literacy — reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Your specific literacy activities might be developed around any or all of these components. Whatever you decide, the Y4Y Literacy course offers course tools to help you address student needs. Explore them all! Program directors and site coordinators are also encouraged to check out the Coaching My Staff section of the course.

The Y4Y Literacy course, like a good book, can be like a worldwide adventure. Be sure your passport is up-to-date, and let Y4Y help you explore the world of literacy so you can bring the very best ideas home to your students.

February 13, 2020

Bad weather is sometimes unpredictable and always out of our control. Cultures that have developed around some of the harshest weather conditions just lean into the storm with good preparation like dry clothes, an emergency kit and a strategic plan. Similarly, people can navigate life’s storms successfully by preparing socially and emotionally. That way, they’re ready to act and respond wisely when difficulties arise — and they always do! Your 21^st CCLC program can use social and emotional learning strategies to help students develop this kind of “storm readiness.”

The Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) has done a great deal of research and development in social and emotional learning. Here’s the definition CASEL uses:

“Social and emotional learning is the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy for others, establish and maintain positive relationships, and make responsible decisions.”

Y4Y’s new Social and Emotional Learning course spotlights five areas for personal growth identified by CASEL:

• Self-awareness
• Self-management
• Social awareness
• Relationship management
• Responsible decision making

People sometimes say these are “soft skills,” which can make them sound unimportant or unnecessary. Nothing could be farther from the truth! Our ability to navigate emotions and relationships greatly affects how and what we learn, in school and beyond. Social and emotional skills are life skills. So, when you model and teach these skills to students, you’re helping them prepare for success throughout their lives.

Not convinced? Think back on your own experiences in school:

• Remember your favorite teacher, coach or counselor? Why is that person your favorite? It’s probably not just because you loved math or were really good at soccer. Your personal relationship with this adult made you more interested in learning what he or she had to teach you.
• Consider a time when you were anxious about a test, felt intimidated by a teacher or had trouble with a classmate. This likely kept you from doing your best. You may even have developed long-term anxiety about test taking, a particular subject or certain kinds of classroom interactions (like giving a speech or working in small groups).

Your experiences are similar to those of every learner, including the children and youth in your 21^st CCLC program. Social relationships and emotional states have a profound effect on learning. Positive emotional experiences motivate people of all ages to work hard and try their best.

Developing smarter, kinder, happier, more productive human beings is a goal we can all get behind. Y4Y’s new Social and Emotional Learning course helps you envision how social and emotional learning fits with that goal and with your other program goals. It also shows you how to weave social and emotional learning strategies into your program activities, and how to support staff members throughout the process.

You might also want to check out Y4Y’s new Creating a Positive Learning Environment course. It has strategies for infusing a “can do” attitude into program activities and routines. That course shows ways your staff can improve the overall program culture and climate, whereas the Social and Emotional Learning course shows ways to help students manage their internal “weather system.”

Why not put on your snow boots or galoshes and jump in with both feet?

November 18, 2019

The gift of identifying and engaging strategic partners only comes to those 21st CCLC professionals who can break free from scotch tape and pretty bows, roll up their sleeves, and apply some creative thinking. Join Detective Dave and go undercover in the newly updated Y4Y professional learning course, Strategic Partnerships. Together, you’ll unwrap five key strategies for making partnerships successful and effective:

Strategy 1: Identify Needs. This basic element in all facets of 21st CCLC practice ensures that your efforts correspond with desired outcomes. The course walks you through using school-level, student-level and student voice data to determine partnership needs. Y4Y offers a Strategic Partnerships Planning Checklist to help you develop your needs statements and set goals.

Strategy 2: Use Community Asset Mapping. Is your program in a rural or an urban setting? In what areas does your program need additional resources to accomplish its goals? Are there potential partners that can support an area of identified need? What does your program have to offer a prospective partner? These are just a few of the questions the course helps you consider in your quest to effectively recruit new community partners.

Strategy 3: Implement an Outreach Plan. Your new partners will fall somewhere on the continuum of engagement: networking, coordinating, cooperating, collaborating or integrating. Wherever you start, you’ll aim to move along the continuum as you collaborate.

Strategy 4: Execute Your Partnerships. Detective Dave steps you through the skills and tools you’ll need, such as negotiating and developing memorandums of understanding, or MOUs, to formalize new strategic partnerships.

Strategy 5: Preserve Your Partnerships. A marriage only begins when you say “I do,” just as a strategic partnership only begins with an MOU. The course offers important tips on routine communications to maintain and grow the partnership.

As with other Y4Y courses, the Strategic Partnerships course includes a Coaching My Staff section to help you prepare staff and stakeholders to identify, develop and sustain strategic partnerships that contribute to program success and sustainability. In this section, you’ll also get help to create a professional learning plan for your staff and stakeholder team, and integrate effective coaching techniques as you implement the plan. Trainings to Go support this important phase of implementation as you and your new partners prepare to walk off into the sunset.