Six Days Left to Honor an Innovative Afterschool Program in Your Community

The Afterschool Alliance and MetLife have partnered up to honor five outstanding afterschool programs with this year's MetLife Foundation Afterschool Innovator Awards. Only six days are left until the nomination deadline of May 31st, 2011!

In addition to $10,000 furnished by MetLife, chosen programs will be featured in an Afterschool Alliance Issue Brief. It's a great way to be highlighted on a national stage!

Nominated programs should fulfill one or more of the following guidelines (taken from the Afterschool Alliance website):

Providing Opportunities for Service Learning for Middle School Students – For exemplary middle school programs that are offering service learning opportunities to middle school youth by integrating community service with instruction to enrich learning experiences, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen their communities.

Aligning Afterschool with the School Day for Middle School – For afterschool that reinforces and complements the students’ regular academic programming in school and innovatively assists students in meeting state and local academic achievement standards in core academic subjects while also broadening their learning experiences.

Addressing Middle School Bullying - For afterschool programs that address the issue of bullying in a novel and creative way to teach children the dangers of ostracizing their peers and ways to deal with bullies.

Supporting Literacy for Middle School Students – For innovative afterschool programs that are excelling in promoting increased literacy, competent writing skills and a passion for reading among participating youth.  

 Good luck to all nominated programs! We can't wait to see the results.

"At the Science Fair"

Science fairs are a big part of both in-school and out-of-school time science learning, and the idea has gotten a lot of high-profile publicity over the last few months, from the White House to Google's Global Science Fair to gyms and auditoriums across the country. 

We were recently contacted by a parent whose son, a high-school student named Kevin, created a video to teach middle school students about science fairs. Kevin did this as part of a project for his IB program, combing his tech skills with science outreach in an engaging way. Check it out! 

Parents of Middle Schoolers Should Emphasize Future Relevance

A new study reports that parents can best help middle school students by linking school work to future goals and instilling the value of education, instead of emphasizing homework help. According to Dr. Nancy Hill, the lead researcher on the Harvard University Study: "Although they may want to make their own decisions, they need guidance
from parents to help provide the link between school and their
aspirations for future work." While instilling the value of academic work had a positive effect, helping with homework produced mixed results.

This finding is not surprising - more help on school work is not as valuable as connecting to the wider world. The finding is specific to parent involvement, but it probably applies to after-school providers as well. Those providers often act as proxies for busy or absent parents. This finding should provide evidence in opposition to the reality that after-school programs for at-risk youth often emphasize homework help over enrichment. Those receiving federal and state funds feel pressure to increase test scores - a short term outcome - as opposed to supporting career interest - which is more closely linked to future achievement. This finding is one of many that should move after-school back to a focus on youth development and academic enrichment and away from tutoring and repetition of the school day.

Science Daily Report on Harvard Study