Resource Database

This handbook from Wellesley College’s National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST) outlines key skills-“core competencies”-needed by afterschool program directors and those they supervise. The publication offers guidance and tools on how to develop the skills, including questionnaires that managers and youth workers can use to determine their strengths and weaknesses. The handbook was developed for the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development and draws on NIOST’s field efforts and research.

This publication from the Wallace Foundation describes five Wallace-funded programs working to expand learning and enrichment for disadvantaged children. All five programs aim to enable low-income students to benefit from the types of opportunities their wealthier counterparts have access to, from homework help to swimming classes. The report details each program’s approach, successes, and challenges, offering a well-rounded picture of the effort nationally to expand learning opportunities for low-income children-and the work that remains.

The National 4-H Council has produced a series of professional development training modules for programs wishing to increase their capacity to offer robotics at their sites. The 4-H Robotics Professional Development Modules assist afterschool coordinators in providing training for staff, volunteers, and teen leaders. Modules include a “Getting Started Guide,” a comprehensive robotics overview, information on recruitment and partnerships, and ideas on expanding and strengthening a new robotics program. Free registration is required to access the guide.

Published in the journal Mentoring & Tutoring: Partnership in Learning, this article examines the effect of a holistic afterschool intervention on reading comprehension for at-risk students in grades 2 through 5. The study showed encouraging results: The 91 student participants showed gains in reading comprehension scores after the intervention. Results of afterschool tutoring lend support to the use of peer tutoring in afterschool in elementary schools.

Click2Science is an interactive, professional development site for trainers, coaches, site directors, and frontline staff/volunteers working in out-of-school time programs serving children and youth. The site offers professional development resources, including videos and a professional community of practice. The site is free and requires user registration.

The number of jobs requiring proficiency in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields is projected to grow by 17 percent between 2008 and 2018, which is almost double the growth of non-STEM occupations. Published by the Afterschool Alliance, this issue brief explores how afterschool programs can take advantage of their flexible learning environments to help students develop STEM skills. The brief also discusses underrepresented populations in STEM careers and the current state of K-12 computing and engineering education.

The U.S. Department of Education’s You for Youth team is hosting a webinar entitled Supporting Literacy with Y4Y on Wednesday, February 19, 2014, at 2 p.m. CST. The webinar will explore how out-of-school time programs can support comprehensive literacy efforts, discuss specific strategies for working with students who read below grade level, investigate how to support students’ language and literacy skills by involving families and building community partnerships, and develop ideas about integrating literacy into your program using the Y4Y portal.

Published by California-based Summer Matters, this report describes how children and youth participate in summer learning experiences that prepare them for the new expectations and teaching strategies they will face under the Common Core State Standards. It illustrates the unique opportunity summer learning programs give educators working to implement the Common Core State Standards to experiment with new lesson plans and instructional strategies and assess their effectiveness in a low-pressure, but genuine learning environment.

The Afterschool Alliance, in partnership with MetLife Foundation, has produced an issue brief on Afterschool and the Common Core State Standards. The brief outlines the education environment that led to the development of the standards and their purpose. It also explains how afterschool programs can help schools implement Common Core State Standards and provides examples of specific programs and activities that support implementation. In addition to the issue brief, the Afterschool Alliance has also created an informational one pager on afterschool and the Common Core State Standards.

“Learning Together: Creating a Community of Practice to Support English Language Learner Literacy” is a case study that examines an afterschool, bilingual family literacy program that brought together several groups to form a community of practice. The community of practice worked to support the literacy development of English language learners and their families. The authors explore the degree to which parents, teachers, students, and other school personnel interact within an afterschool family literacy program and learn from each other as a community of practice. They found that family literacy nights offered opportunities for collaboration among different communities of practice that did not exist during the regular school day. They suggest that participating in family literacy nights can be an important way to connect various school-based groups to one another and to linguistically diverse families, creating a community of practice united by participants' shared interest in literacy development. The article is published in the journal Language, Culture and Curriculum.