July 22, 2020

For years to come, it may be difficult to measure the impact of the COVID pandemic on the children of today, given that nearly every student on the planet will be touched in some way by it. Like other challenging times throughout history, the degree of that impact will vary significantly. So, too, will the effects on child development. Y4Y urges 21^st CCLC professionals to take some time at this crucial juncture to review our Social and Emotional Learning course and Trauma-Informed Care Click & Go and arm yourself with tools to help students stay as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as circumstances allow. While there’s no simple solution, keeping these basics of a healthy childhood in mind will help you be of greatest value in the lives of your students until that day in the future when this is all behind us. Here are some simple actions you can take:

Practice Frameworks for Social and Emotional Learning

• Positive youth development supports positive outcomes by fostering competence, confidence, connections, character and caring. Simple action: Individually “catch students with character” from a list of admirable character traits you develop as a group and keep posted over your shoulder in your virtual program. This will build confidence and caring as well as character.
• Mindfulness development increases the ability to focus on the present moment over past or future events. This can improve executive function skills and self-regulation. Simple action: Build age-appropriate mindfulness techniques into your daily program routine.
• Trauma-informed practice seeks to minimize the effects of childhood trauma by offering safety, trustworthiness and transparency; peer support; collaboration; empowerment; and respect for diversity. Simple action: Connect individually as often as possible with students you believe may be experiencing trauma. Your small, heartfelt gestures can have immeasurable value when you think of yourself as an anchor in the child’s life.

Five Skill Domains of Social and Emotional Learning

• Self-awareness. Simple action: Ask questions that promote introspection, like “How did you feel in a situation?”
• Self-management. Simple action: Ask questions that promote reflection, like “Do you wish you had done anything differently in that situation?”
• Social awareness. Simple action: Ask questions that promote compassion, like “How do you think your friend felt in that situation?”
• Responsible decision making. Simple action: Ask questions that promote planning, like “How will you react the next time you’re in a situation?”
• Relationship skills. Simple action: Ask questions that promote collaboration, like “How might you work with others the next time you’re in a situation?”

Simple Practices for Developing Resilience

• Pay it forward. Doing for others builds self-worth.
• Express yourself. The skill of accessing and talking about feelings gives you power over them.
• Hang out. There’s simple beauty and value in social time. That looks different right now, but you can make it a priority for students to have a safe, relaxed space with their peers.
• Imagine. Talk about the future in happy, sunny terms.
• Take care. As tempting as it is to “let go” with so much time spent at home, model and encourage good sleep, eating and exercise habits.
• Lean into the fall. “Failures” can be reframed as new opportunities to learn and grow.
• Wear your thinking cap. Create micro-opportunities for students to exercise and show off their critical thinking.
• Call it half full. A positive spin can be put on many things, even a quarantine. Let students know that today’s experts believe they’ll grow up to be stronger, more resilient, and more empathetic adults for what they are currently experiencing in their young lives.

Bring a team with you! Check out Y4Y’s tool for assigning roles and responsibilities around social and emotional learning.

June 16, 2020

June is for educators what December is for the rest of the world. And this academic year was certainly not what anybody expected! What worked in your program, and what “new year’s” resolutions would you like to set for next year’s program? How can Y4Y resources help you achieve those goals? To get those creative juices flowing, start by exploring Y4Y’s tools for continuous improvement, such as the SWOT Analysis Worksheet, Sample Evaluation Guide, the Continuous Improvement Process Diagram and Planner. Then, plan for a deeper dive into those areas that need particular attention.

Here are the top 2020 New Year’s resolutions set by Americans, and their translation into 21^st CCLC-speak:

Exercise More

How well are you incorporating physical activity into your program? Have you caught Y4Y’s archived Showcase webinar, Expanding Quality Health and Recreation Opportunities? A summary of the resources presented is also available. Start with a good stretch: Reach out and connect with your community using Y4Y’s Mapping Community Assets tool. Get the heart pumping with engaging project-based learning. A wealth of ideas were presented during the May webinar series, and resources were shared to the discussion board. Looking for a little muscle mass? The Y4Y course on strategic partnerships offers important steps to building a stronger program and the importance of teamwork. Don’t forget the cool-down.

Save Money/Stick to a Budget

Do you know that as many 21^st CCLC programs have unspent funds as those that end the year on the crumbs of their annual funding? The key to a successful fiscal year is staying right on target. Step 1: Know your grant! Step 2: Catch session 1 of the New Leaders Academy Webinar, which gives an overview of what expenditures are allowed in your program. Step 3: Go deeper and take Y4Y’s Managing Your 21^st CCLC Program course. Step 4: Get out Y4Y’s Sample 21^st CCLC Budget Worksheet and start the new program year fresh as a crisp Benjamin.

Don’t forget to share the importance of fiscal responsibility with your students and their families. Y4Y offers a Click & Go and an online course on financial literacy.

Eat More Healthily

“Garbage in, garbage out.” Although this expression came from the computing industry, we have come to appreciate that our bodies need the right fuel to work best, and so do our 21^st CCLC programs. Nothing fuels a healthy program like the right staff! Y4Y’s Human Resources course will help ensure you recruit and retain the right folks for the job. Safety is also at the center of your program’s health. Be sure to check out Y4Y’s Developing and Implementing a Safety Plan Click & Go to safeguard the health of your program and your students.

Get More Sleep

People who set a resolution for more sleep recognize they’re trying to do too much, and probably not performing efficiently or effectively in the process. Achieving this goal often means improving self-management and decision making. These skills are at the heart of Y4Y’s course on social and emotional learning, along with self-awareness, social awareness and relationship skills. The role of your 21^st CCLC program in the lives of your students extends well beyond academic support. Research tells us they’ll need social and emotional tools to be well-adjusted and to truly succeed as adults. The good news is, you can weave this theme through activities you’re already doing in your program. Look to Y4Y’s Logic Model Template, Delivery Methods, and other tools to achieve this worthwhile goal without spending time you don’t have, or worse still, time you’re stealing from other important areas. Like SLEEP!

Focus on Personal or Mindful Growth

One of the greatest luxuries of out-of-school time is the space it creates for individual attention and care. Your program can be a haven for students’ social and emotional growth — a safe space where they can explore who they are and who they want to be. Some might say you’re nourishing not just their minds, but their hearts and energies. Y4Y’s course on Creating a Positive Learning Environment can help you ensure that students feel supported. Appreciated. Special. Safe. For best practices that promote the “energy wellness” of your program and your students, also take a look at Y4Y’s Click & Go on Trauma-Informed Care. It can help in those instances where the hearts in your care need a little extra nurturing.

Tip: Planning to bring new staff on board? If they’re new to 21^st CCLC programs, Y4Y’s Introduction to 21^st CCLC course can help them get up to speed! Don’t forget Y4Y’s ready-to-use tools you can use to train your entire staff, whether they’re 21^st CCLC novices or veterans, on a variety of topics, including project-based learning, financial literacy, college and career readiness, and more! Happy New Year!

May 19, 2020

This famous quote by Aesop demonstrates the role of gratitude in our mental wellness. The times we’re living in might leave many of us with a heightened sense of worry, yet others are discovering the inner gratitude they feel just for having their basic needs met. Modern-day research supports Aesop’s theory! Gratitude is good medicine for both mental and physical health. Discover how Y4Y’s new course on social and emotional learning can help you take students on a journey to this point of wisdom.

At the heart of social and emotional learning are five skill domains that serve as a framework for developing positive, healthy habits throughout life. Let’s explore how gratitude plays a role in each.

Self-awareness is the skill of recognizing and being able to articulate your own feelings, strengths and limitations. Confidence and a growth mindset result from acquiring this skill. Only those with healthy self-awareness can gratefully measure their lives by its positive elements, viewing challenges as opportunities to grow.

Self-management is the ability to self-regulate your thoughts, feelings and behaviors. With successful self-management comes goal setting and the ability to work toward those goals. When that happens, even those gaps in success at feeling gratitude can be tackled head-on with mindfulness exercises that build a positive outlook.

Social awareness is the ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others, no matter how big or small their differences from you might be. At times it may be tempting to view the misfortunes of others through a lens of gratitude that we are not, ourselves, in their shoes, but this isn’t true empathy. You can help students and yourself discover true social awareness. You’ll know you’ve succeeded when the misfortunes of others move you toward compassion, and you view their successes and triumphs as cause for celebration.

Responsible decision making is the ability to make constructive choices about your personal behavior. This is where Aesop really got it right! How many mistakes in our lives might have been avoided if we felt that what we had was enough? This has financial, educational, professional and relational meaning. Of course, setting goals for improving your life in any of these arenas is not a sign that you lack gratitude. Rather, gratitude can be the well from which you draw the strength to envision great things.

Relationship skills speak to the ability to establish and maintain healthy and rewarding diverse relationships. Here, again, gratitude can be a crystal-clear reflection of how we really feel about the people in our lives. Some are there by choice, and some are not, but someone who has had a positive social and emotional education can learn to focus on the best in others. More important, their gratitude for others will nurture those relationships.

You’ll be well versed on how to thread social and emotional learning into your 21^st CCLC program once you complete the new Y4Y course on the topic. Until then, you can review Y4Y resources like the Delivery Methods for Social and Emotional Learning, the Social and Emotional Learning Implementation Checklist and the Social and Emotional Learning Activity Intentional Design Planner tools. Your students will thank you.

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?

June 20, 2018

Do you wake up each morning with a new brilliant idea for your program? That’s wonderful! But when was the last time you encouraged your program team to bring their ideas to the table? Try these strategies to bolster professional learning this fall, and you’ll set the stage for teamwork and creativity.

1. The spontaneous yes. The next time you hear a team member introduce a good idea with “I wish…” or “If only…,” respond with an enthusiastic “Yes! Terrific idea!” Follow up by asking them to start thinking of ways to make it happen. Offer to put the idea on the agenda for a future team meeting so they can get input from others and develop the idea further. Your encouragement and support might be just the push they need to get the ball rolling.
2. Virtual brainstorming. These sessions often start in real time during team meetings and move to a virtual (online) space with a "ticking clock" deadline (usually 1 to 5 days). This approach gets even the most shy or reluctant team member to participate. Team members can add to one another's ideas during the virtual brainstorming session but refrain from evaluating or criticizing ideas. No decisions are made until after the deadline.
3. The “what if” game. Invite your team to reflect on this question: “If money and resources were not an issue, what program practice would you add, change or get rid of, and why do you think it would make a positive difference?” Once everyone’s ideas are on the table, challenge the team to “think outside the box” about possible ways to make their best ideas come true. (You could use the “virtual brainstorming” process to play this game.)