October 10, 2019

“Before you become a leader, success is all about growing yourself. After you become a leader, success is about growing others.” As a 21^st CCLC program leader, you no doubt see the wisdom in this insight from business leader Jack Welch. After all, supporting and acknowledging your team’s professional growth benefits your program as well as individual staff members. It also helps you retain staff because it shows you’re invested in their success and treasure their contributions.

Y4Y’s new online Human Resources course walks you through nine key strategies you can use to manage and develop your staff. It covers everything from hiring to training to building a positive work environment to managing staff performance. Here are three tips you can start using right away:

Help staff members find their sweet spot. If Natalie loves to plan, enlist her to help plan the next Family Literacy Event or Citizen Science Experience. Once she’s had success, provide opportunities for her to grow her skills and use them in new ways. For example, ask her to lead a planning team, create an event planning checklist for staff, train others in event planning, or join a strategic planning session. If these tasks seem to take her out of her comfort zone, provide encouragement and support. Helping her find the “sweet spot” between current and potential abilities will help her grow.

Provide feedback to focus and inspire your staff. Let’s say Natalie loves planning so much that she offers to help students plan their culminating project presentations. As you observe her interact with students, you hear her say things like “Let’s do it this way” and “Here’s a better idea.” Should you call her aside and say, “Natalie, you’re making too many decisions for students instead of letting them make their own. I’d like to see you improve in this area.” Or should you say, “Natalie, I’d love for our students to develop their project planning and decision-making skills. Would you be willing to team with Linda to plan some coaching strategies to help students learn and practice these skills?” Which feedback is more likely to inspire and support Natalie in changing her approach? For most people, the second approach works best. See the Coaching My Staff section of Y4Y’s Human Resources course for ways to coach your staff (especially site coordinators) to program gold!

Recognize good work. Use formal and informal strategies to tell staff members their contributions are noticed and valued. For example, during employee reviews, be specific and give examples of what employees do well. Implement an employee recognition system to spotlight effort, innovation, problem solving and results. Recognize individual and team efforts. See Y4Y’s Employee Retention Training to Go for ideas you and other program leaders can use to keep staff engaged.

For more ideas on ways to treasure your staff and help them grow, see Y4Y’s new Human Resources course. To share your own ideas and success stories, leave a comment below. 

August 7, 2018

Could you pass a basic test of financial literacy? According to the FINRA Foundation’s National Capability Study, in 2015, 63 percent of Americans couldn’t. Can you calculate the interest you would owe on a loan, do you know the difference between a 401K and an IRA, or do you know how to improve your credit score? Because so many adults struggle with these concepts, we need to do a better job of preparing students and closing the financial literacy gap.

Where are young people supposed to learn about money and their financial future? In 2018, according to a report from Next Gen Personal Finance, only 16.4 percent of students were required to take a personal finance course prior to graduation. Out-of-school time programs that connect activities to the real world are the perfect place for students, from elementary to high school, to enhance and apply financial literacy skills. The big question is where to begin, especially when many adults may not feel confident in financial literacy.

A number of groups, such as the Jump$tart Coalition and the Council for Economic Education, have done some thinking about what financial literacy should look like at different ages. At its most basic, financial literacy can be broken down into these categories:

• Earning
• Spending
• Saving and Investing
• Credit and Debt
• Protecting and Insuring

So, how do you help students of all ages better understand those categories and give them opportunities to explore and practice related skills? Financial literacy shouldn’t be taught through boring slides that explain compound interest. Let students truly explore financial concepts in action!

• Students can collaborate to create a business and sell a product, such as pet rocks. Give students a start-up budget that they must manage. Let them determine their expenses, price their product, and learn about profit and loss. Have them make proposals to other students for investment money. See this Edutopia blog for more ideas about introducing entrepreneurial activities.  
• Middle and high school students can participate in the SIFMA Foundation’s Stock Market Game, which is specifically designed for out-of-school time programs.
• Give students a taste of life after graduation. Many online resources offer game-of-life lessons, or you can try the Finance Authority of Maine’s online Claim Your Future game. Here, students can try out various education choices, careers and other financial decisions.

Teaching financial literacy also provides great opportunities for community partnerships and high-value connections to students’ family members. Many banks offer some form of community outreach programming. This could include a speaker who would visit your program, a volunteer who would teach a series of classes, or the opportunity for your site to offer banking days complete with student savings accounts. Invite parents and other family members to build financial literacy alongside their children, or schedule events at convenient times and locations for family members who work during program hours.

To explore more resources and ideas for incorporating financial literacy into your program, visit the Financial Literacy for All section of the Y4Y website and download the Quick Guide to Financial Literacy.

May 21, 2018

Your 21^st CCLC program can demonstrate success with two major indicators: student growth and student/family satisfaction. You can define both indicators in your continuous improvement plan and collect data to determine progress. When you recruit students and family members at the start of a new program session, you want to demonstrate that students will love the program activities, and that your program nurtures the whole child.

How do you accomplish that? The answer is simple: use data.

Yes, numbers can seem dry and boring. But, when you collect the right information and connect the dots across data points, magic happens — you tell a story! The U.S. Department of Education’s Y4Y technical assistance team is ready to help you weave your data into a compelling narrative with a showcase webinar and three-part web series that kicks off on June 14. Attend these sessions and you will be able to show the world that your program delivers academic enrichment with safe, supportive relationships and smiles all around.

Showcase Webinar:

Data! What is it Good for? Absolutely EVERYTHING! 

June 14, 2018, 1 p.m. - 2:30 p.m.

Join the U.S. Department of Education's Y4Y team to learn how to do the following:

• Identify the components of a logic model and use the model to plan with the end in mind.
• Describe the steps of the continuous improvement process.
• Brainstorm strategies for reaching out to present and potential partners using program and outcomes data.
• Use Y4Y tools and resources to support telling your story through data.

Register now.

Follow-Up Web Series, Dates TBA

This three-part web series will dive deeply into the following components: planning with the end in mind, interpreting data to make decisions, and crafting a story with your data.

Virtual Session 1: My Data Path

Planning with the end in mind transforms your data collection from haphazard and compliance-based to purposeful and meaningful. In this session, learn how to illustrate a plan for program outcomes using a logic model. With the model and other Y4Y resources, learn to build a clear path toward desired outcomes. This session will prepare you to do the following:

• Use data to set SMART goals to plan intentional activities.
• Use tools to collect needs assessment and outcome data.
• Develop a logic model.
• Implement with fidelity.

Virtual Session 2: Drawing Conclusions From Data

In this session, learn how to interpret outcome data and make timely, informed decisions. Consistent monitoring and responsive adjustments will ensure an authentic and positive story that describes successes and challenges. This session will prepare you to do the following:

• Reflect on goals and understand why they were or were not met.
• Plan for improvement if necessary.
• Complete a reflection chart.

Virtual Session 3: Crafting a Compelling Narrative

Compelling and effective storytelling techniques will be paired with data analysis to translate a program’s progress into a captivating narrative. This session will prepare you to do the following:

• Describe the successes and challenges you faced in reaching your goals.
• Use Y4Y tools to develop your narrative.
• Present your story in a compelling narrative.