Weekly Media Roundup: February 4, 2026

The Ties that Bind Us: Children's Beach House, NBC Coast TV (Delaware)

At the Children’s Beach House in Lewes, Delaware, students with communicative disabilities play and learn alongside typically developing peers, gaining confidence and skills. “The kids who have a delay in speech [...] learn faster from those kids who are typically developing than they do from anything we can do,” Richard Garrett, executive director of Children’s Beach House, told NBC Coast TV. “And the kids who are typically developing can learn some empathy and some coping skills when they talk with kids who are different. So it's a win-win for everybody.” Children’s Beach House offers preschool, afterschool programming and summer camps with a focus on serving under-resourced communities.

South Fulton Afterschool Program Teams Up with Freestyle Rappers to Give Students A Lyrical Education, CBS News Atlanta (Georgia)

Students at the Finish Strong Learning Pod afterschool program in South Fulton, Georgia are learning to read and write while rapping fast-paced rhythms and lyrics with local musicians. The afterschool program partners with Soul Food Cypher, a nonprofit organization showcasing the transformative power of freestyle rap. “What better way to connect reading with my scholars than to have ciphers come in?” Finish Strong Learning Pod founder Sylvia Carter told CBS News Atlanta. “Alliteration and similes and all of those things. And my scholars absolutely loved it. So I would say, as an educator, sometimes we gotta switch things up, bring in other things that will grab our students.”

Parents Find Creative Solutions During Extended School Closures in the Ozarks, KY3 (MO)

Out-of-school time programs in the Springfield, Missouri area have stepped up to provide emergency programming as schools have needed to close for multiple days during the recent winter storm. Program leaders say demand has spiked as essential workers seek child care solutions that will keep their kids safe, engaged and learning. “We do education in a number of different ways, informally, formally, and traditional education. We try to make all types of learning fun and we want everyone to enjoy doing it for their entire life,” Riana Clark, vice president of education at the Discovery Center, told KY3.

Afterschool Programs Matter to AL Students but Access Gaps Remain, Public News Service

Thanks to high-quality afterschool programs, Omari Wilson, a middle schooler in Alabama, has learned to build robots, pursued his love of sports, and connected with mentors who push him to be his best. But the Afterschool Alliance’s America After 3PM study found that for every child in an afterschool program in Alabama, four others cannot access one. “If you factor in inflation, federal support is actually lower than it was just three years ago,” Nikki Yamashiro, vice president of research for the Afterschool Alliance, told Public News Service. “It’s why we've fallen behind and it really makes the case of why we need to invest so much more in after-school programs.”