The nomination process for the 2011 MetLife Afterschool Innovator Awards is now underway.  We are looking for a select group of afterschool programs that incorporate best practices and serve as an example of what is possible in afterschool.  Below are four programs chosen from the entries for the 2010 MetLife Afterschool Innovator Awards for STEM.  The Bridge Project in Denver and the Science Club for Girls in Boston were winners of last year's awards while Sisters 4 Science and Woodcraft Rangers were runners-up.  We want to feature even more strong afterschool programs, so nominate a program for this year's awards!

 

 

 

In Cambridge, Mass., “girl power” means “STEM power.” What started ten years ago as a response to troubling research suggesting that middle school girls were losing interest in STEM is now an award-winning program leading the way in readying today’s female students to take on the global job market of tomorrow.

 

The Science Club for Girls, which works with about 1,000 youth every year across ten different sites, seeks to increase science literacy and self-confidence in girls, especially those underrepresented in STEM fields, by providing a continuum of engagement from Kindergarten all the way through 12^th grade. The clubs are semester-long programs focused on hands-on learning in a wide range of STEM topics from astronomy and astronautics to climate change and oceanography.

 

It seems that their efforts are paying off. Participants in the Science Club for Girls had more positive attitudes toward science, were more confident in themselves as science students and more aware of STEM careers compared to their peers who did not participate. In fact, an internal evaluation showed that 46% of participating girls want to pursue a STEM career when they grow up, compared to just 35% of their non-participating peers. Over the past seven years, half of the program’s high school graduates have chosen a STEM-related college major. 

But their success comes not only from their exceptional curriculum. As the girls reach middle school, they are exposed to the real-world applications of the principles they study by exploring the wide array of possible STEM-related careers through monthly visits with women in science and field trips to STEM companies, universities and other institutions they may not associate with STEM like art conservation, patent law and culinary art.

The Science Club for Girls provides youth with successful mentors and role models in the form of women in academic and professional STEM fields who run the clubs. In addition, middle school girls take part in a related program called C.E.L.L.S. (Career Exploration, Leadership and Life Skills), which uses a near-peer mentoring model that allows participants to act as Junior Mentors for younger girls and help facilitate club activities. This helps to retain those younger girls as they look forward to working in a new role while maximizing their self-image. In a survey, over 95% of C.E.L.L.S. participants who were previously uninterested in science said that they became much more engaged, especially in the topics they were helping to teach.

One 8^th grader who participated in both the Science Club for Girls and C.E.L.L.S. put it best:

Together, the Science Club for Girls and C.E.L.L.S. provide much-needed professional, emotional, and relational development for the girls involved by focusing on building strong bonds amongst the youth and coaching them to seek out and identify mentors all while teaching them to appreciate the diversity among the Club participants. “The girls come from different communities and backgrounds… are US-born and immigrant; native to Massachusetts or other states;…homeless, live in housing developments or affluent neighborhoods; from two-parent or single-parent families; and have traveled the world by choice or by circumstance,” said Executive Director Connie Chow. “Our goal is to have girls develop respect for each other and find commonalities with each other.”

 

The Bridge Project in Denver, Colorado, offers sciences to students in an engaging and relevant way, and enables them to share their knowledge with the wider community. Participants do hands-on science experiments focused on renewable energy, including building solar ovens and wind turbines, then work with state-of-the-art movie-making and editing equipment to create a film, which is shared with the local community. Participants have increased school attendance, improved grades and increased graduation rates; they also show significant improvements in school engagement, family support and parental support for education and behavioral expectations at school. Check out the National Renewable Energy Laboratory for resources on renewable energy.

 

Project Exploration/Sisters 4 Science (S4S) in Chicago, Illinois works to ensure communities traditionally overlooked by science education--particularly minority youth and girls--have access to personalized experiences with science and scientists. The afterschool program includes hands-on activities, authentic fieldwork, leadership development and the chance to develop long-term relationships with adult instructors and fellow students. The program merges research-based best practices for both youth development and science education into a model that gets youth interested in science, keeps them interested, and builds their capacity to pursue science. Participants in the program have higher rates of high school graduation and college attendance than their non-participating peers. Further, 35 percent of all female participants who graduate from high school go on to major in science.

 

Woodcraft Rangers in Los Angeles, California makes STEM education relevant and captivating for young people who would otherwise have little or no access to STEM activities. Participants are exposed to cutting-edge STEM activity options that motivate them to pursue postsecondary education and vocational pursuits. Rather than relying on a static menu of activities, Woodcraft Rangers afterschool STEM club themes are wide-ranging and selected by students, giving them ownership and increasing their engagement. The overarching goal of the program is to motivate youth to pursue related STEM topics in high school and beyond, and to prepare them for professional careers in STEM-related fields. Outcomes for participants consistently reflect these goals, with over 70 percent of participants achieving expected benefits. Multifaceted evaluations find that participants also show improvement in school attendance, academic achievement and behavior.