What stood out most to me during the webinar was just how well-situated afterschool programs are to support students’ learning and growth under the Common Core.  Jenell highlighted afterschool programs in Wisconsin that are helping their kids achieve under the Common Core in innovative and promising ways.  For example, The Goodman Community Center, one program she reviewed, excels at connecting the afterschool program to learning that takes place during the school day.  The afterschool program has eight school day teachers on staff who help develop academic enrichment activities using the CCSS; the program sends monthly newsletters to teachers at each school; and program staff attend Individual Education Plan (IEP) meetings for students enrolled in the program, attend school functions and also observe their students during the school day.  The program also collects data on their students’ grades, test scores, behavior and attendance to develop a portfolio for each student that identifies their needs and helps assess their progress.  This individualized analysis not only monitors students’ progress, but it allows staff to most effectively help students develop mastery of subject content in areas such as reading and writing. 

As a resource for afterschool programs that are looking to learn more about the Common Core and how to use it to complement their programming, NJSACC developed Supporting Student Success (S₃).  Sarah shared that NJSACC worked with 10 afterschool programs, providing webinar training and technical support to plan and implement program activities that support the Common Core, creating a community that facilitates peer-to-peer learning and administering assessment to look at the impact of the training.  One example of an afterschool program taking part in the project was the 21^st Century Community Learning Center in Pemberton, NJ.  Through the project, the program created a reading program aligned with English language arts Common Core.  However, the program made certain that the program content developed was engaging and looked different than reading taking place during the school day.  For instance, reading groups were based on a student’s interest, rather than their reading level.  The mixed reading level groups allowed students to help one another and become more enthusiastic about reading because it was tied to something relevant and meaningful in their lives.  Sarah revealed that students in the program felt that participation made them more engaged in their classes during the school day and also helped them better understand what they were taught during the school day.

The webinar was one hour long, but I wish it could have been longer to hear more about these afterschool programs that show just how valuable the out-of-school hours are to the implementation of the Common Core and preparing students for success in school, college and career.  On the bright side, there are a number of resources out there to learn more about the role afterschool programs can play to support the Common Core, and be sure to check back here as we continue to share more information related to the Common Core.

What does Common Core mean for afterschool?  Whether you agree or disagree with Common Core, these standards are the reality for students, families and educators in nearly every state.  While the goals of afterschool go well beyond academic support, given the importance of Common Core to educators and the ways in which Common Core will impact the learning experience for children and youth, the Common Core will surely affect afterschool providers as well.   

How can you help prepare afterschool programs and staff to support learning under the Common Core State Standards?

• Educate yourself about Common Core and the role of afterschool.  Achieve has a variety of resources on Common Core, including guides for elementary and secondary school leaders and guidance counselors.  In addition, there are briefs focused on the role of afterschool that share examples of programs and recommendations for supporting learning under the Common Core.
  • From the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO): Connecting High-Quality Expanded Learning Opportunities and the Common Core State Standards to Advance Student Success
  • From the Forum for Youth Investment:  The Common Core Standards: What do they Mean for Out-of-School Time?
  • From the Partnership for Children and Youth: Linking Common Core and Expanded Learning
• Help parents better understand the Common Core and what it means for their children.  The National PTA and the Council of Great City Schools both have parent resources on Common Core available for download.  Given the strong relationship that afterschool providers have with parents and families, programs are well positioned to help educate parents about the Common Core.
  • National PTA’s Parents Guide to Student Success
  • Council of the Great City Schools’ Parent Roadmaps to Common Core
• Promote opportunities for professional development and sharing among afterschool staff and school staff.  Expanding Minds and Opportunities includes an article on Common Core and expanded learning that features a couple of examples:
  • In Wisconsin, district and local expanded learning programs are connecting with school curriculum online and directly with teachers.  Programs include current and retired teachers on their staff to facilitate effective engagement with schools and the academic content students are learning.
  • The New Jersey State Afterschool Network, NJSACC, in cooperation with the New Jersey State Department of Education, completed a statewide pilot training program on the Common Core for afterschool program leaders. Training sessions focused on how to align student activities and curriculum with the Common Core.
• Check out examples of afterschool providers who are helping students reach Common Core.
  • The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and America’s Promise Alliance have an upcoming webinar on May 6 that will explore the ways in which afterschool and summer programs can help students achieve under the Common Core standards.  Examples from New Jersey and Wisconsin will be highlighted and case studies, best practices and lessons learned will be featured. 

As the recognition of the valuable role that afterschool and summer programs play in supporting student learning continues to grow, it is essential that afterschool providers demonstrate how they can expand on and complement the learning that happens during the school day.  Throughout the rest of 2013 and beyond, we’ll be working to provide the afterschool community with resources related to Common Core and the role of afterschool in helping all students succeed in school and out.

There would be a significant reduction of investment in informal STEM education (ISE) if this budget request were to be approved.  Federal science mission agencies—such as NASA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Defense, and the Environmental Protection Agency—that have invested in ISE and afterschool see a significant reduction if not a complete elimination of their STEM education budgets.  Of particular interest to the afterschool community, NASA’s Summer of Innovation program, which has provided funds to summer and afterschool providers, has been zeroed out.  The National Science Foundation’s Advancing Informal Science Learning program also sees a $13.6 million cut below its current level of funding.       

The Smithsonian is a new and surprising partner in STEM education, and the details of the $25 million request for “STEM engagement” are still being worked out.  One of its main roles will likely be to serve as a centralized location for the education resources generated by the various science mission agencies.  According to the budget request:

“The STEM initiative will be coordinated by the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access, which will create new online resources and experiences for students that have a measurable impact, align Smithsonian content with learning standards set by the states and create communities of teachers who may use Smithsonian content and tools to customize their own programs.”  

At the Department of Education, the only real new opportunity for ISE lies with the “STEM Innovation Networks,” a new program to help school districts build strategic partnerships with institutions of higher education, museums, businesses, government agencies, etc.  The three pillars for these networks are supposed to be teacher preparation, teacher professional development and ISE.  However, the only required partnership as of right now is between school districts and universities, raising a concern that ISE will (again) not play its rightful role in STEM education reform.

The focus of the other K-12 programs proposed by the department is on teacher recruitment, preparation and professional development—$80 million to prepare 100,000 excellent teachers over the next decade (the "100k in 10" initiative) and $35 million to pilot a new program, the STEM Master Teacher Corps, that would recognize and reward the best and brightest STEM teachers and help them play a leadership role in their schools and communities.  The Effective Teaching and Learning Program (formerly the Math and Science Partnerships Program) will receive $150 million; this program has been mostly used to provide professional development to teachers.

There are still many details to be worked out in this large-scale redesign of STEM education.  While the proposal is worrisome for those of us who strongly believe that ISE should play an integral role in STEM education reform, it is still just a budget request.  The ISE and afterschool community should view it as an opportunity to engage the Administration and Congress in a dialogue about the research base and evidence for building an “ecosystem for learning” that includes afterschool.  Let’s rally to make it clear that young people lose when they can’t participate in innovative engaging afterschool STEM learning opportunities.

What happens outside of the classroom can be as important to a student as what happens inside of the classroom.  Research has shown that kids in afterschool programs see improvements in their grades, school attendance and behavior in the classroom.  Children also become more self-confident and develop higher self-esteem.  Students in afterschool programs are also less likely to be victims or perpetrators of violence and working parents have peace of mind with the knowledge that their children are in a safe environment surrounded by caring adults.   

Afterschool programs across the country are helping to keep kids safe, inspire learning and help working families.  Yet, despite the wealth of research and stories we hear every day on the ways afterschool programs are supporting kids and families, we’ve found that afterschool programs are struggling to keep up their services and meet the demands for afterschool in their communities.  Close to 8 in 10 voters want their newly elected federal, state and local officials to fund afterschool programs, and more than three-quarters of voters want them to provide more funding for afterschool programs given the current challenging economic environment. 

I hope that you’ll lend your voice to the thousands of other voices speaking out about the crucial role afterschool programs play in making sure our children stay safe, stay in school, and stay excited and engaged in learning.  This new guidebook and video from America’s Promise Alliance can be a great tool for engaging others in your community in better understanding and valuing the role of afterschool and ideally get them to lend their voices as well.

One such example is a Learning Lab in progress at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland.  OMSI, in partnership with the Multnomah County Library, formed the Awesome Teen Advisory Council (A-TAC), a teen advisory council that is helping with all things associated with the development of their Maker Center and travelling Maker Center, from conceptual design of the space to educational programming (if you’re interested in learning more about the Maker movement, you can take a look at a blog post on the Makerspace website).  The Maker Center will work to connect students in the community, particularly 9^th grade students who may need extra support as they start high school, with creative and participatory activities that allow them to mess around in subject areas such as science, art and design.  Although the Maker Center isn’t up and running yet, A-TAC is out and about in the community sharing their projects that show the heightened levels of excitement and engagement that can happen around learning when it is linked to students’ interests, when youth are given a voice, when they are able to express themselves creatively, and when they are in a friendly and supportive environment. 

If you’re interested in hearing more about Learning Labs, tune in for Afterschool Alliance’s March 12 webinar, The New Normal: Public Libraries as Partners in 21^st Century Learning.

Regardless of respondents’ role in their school’s afterschool programs, an overwhelming majority (94%) view the programs as key partners in providing additional STEM learning opportunities for their students.  Afterschool STEM supports school-day learning in a number of specific ways; respondents’ top five are listed below:

1. Provides additional time for students to engage with STEM in a different way (93%)
2. Provides hands-on engagement not always possible during the school day (89%)
3. Provides students with more opportunities to do engineering and technology (83%)
4. Teaches them 21^st century STEM-relevant skills such as team work, problem solving, communication, etc. (83%)
5. Exposes students to professionals and mentors in STEM fields (71%)

Additionally, more than 9 in 10 survey respondents agreed that afterschool has a role in helping schools think about the implementation of the Next Generation Science Standards.  It is clear that school-day staff recognize the synergies with afterschool, as it provides a unique learning environment that both complements and supplements school-day learning.  The urgent need to improve STEM education, address workforce issues and improve other educational outcomes is a big task.  As children spend less than 20% of their waking hours in school each year, schools can’t tackle these issues alone—the afterschool field is a willing partner!

To learn more about the outcomes of STEM learning in afterschool, check out the Afterschool Alliance's recently published report on what afterschool experts agree is appropriate and feasible for this space.  For several recommendations on how afterschool can grow to become an essential partner in STEM education reform, read this article from the new book, “Expanding Minds and Opportunities: Leveraging the Power of Afterschool and Summer Learning for Student Success.”

How do we do this?  We strengthen and build on what economists refer to as “noncognitive” skills, the medical community refers to as “executive functions” and what Tough likes to call “character.”  The list of seven strengths that was developed to quantify character include:

1. Grit
2. Self-control
3. Zest
4. Social intelligence
5. Gratitude
6. Optimism
7. Curiosity

Circling back to the opening paragraph, the word “failure” isn’t quite accurate.  He gave a fantastic analogy of running on a treadmill versus climbing a mountain.  Both are forms of exercise, but when you get on a treadmill, you know the level you’re going to program into the machine and you know that you will be able to finish your run.  On the other hand, when you climb a mountain, there’s a possibility that you are going to fail and that you won’t make it to the top.  In other words, in one instance you’re going through the motions but you’re not pushing yourself to the next level.  In the latter instance, you may not succeed, but by facing adversity, you are practicing how to handle failure and the bumps in the road everyone experiences in life. 

It’s this adversity that Tough believes teaches kids how to manage failure and how to develop character.  However, he refers to the “adversity gap”—where if there’s too much adversity, the youth need to have protection and support to face the challenges in front of them, but if there isn’t enough adversity, youth need more exposure to challenges and opportunities to fail.  Visiting schools across the country, he found that more often than not, kids living in high poverty areas were falling behind academically and were let fail too often.  In lower income schools, a number of students faced high stress and other negative factors outside of school that directly affected their school performance, their behavior and their overall well-being.  At the other end of the spectrum were affluent schools, where most students were overachievers and highly competitive and where students were protected from failure by their school, their parents and the overall culture of their environment.  These students were missing out on the opportunity to develop grit.  

Tough makes the argument that we as a society need to learn how to model failure for children and show them that falling down is not the worst thing in the world.  He also believes that it’s the relationship that children develop between their parents, their teachers, their mentors and other supportive adults that is the most important factor in guiding kids toward success. 

Tough closed his speech with the hope that his research makes people want to help more, to want a better system where all kids are given the opportunity to succeed, and to want to work on policies and with organizations to make all of this happen.  All in all, it was a great way to start off a week that will culminate in our Afterschool for All Challenge—letting Congress know how important afterschool programs are for our kids, families and communities.