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| 5th Annual PEAR Conference The Whole Child, The Whole Day Lunch Session Notes: Links to the National Scene Peter Howe, Chief Operating Officer of the National After-School Alliance spoke about the National Afterschool Association-a leading voice of the afterschool community dedicated to children and youth which started in the 1990s. There are now more than 9,000 members. Nearly 3,000 practitioners came to their national conference last year. The association has developed standards for “quality school-age care”. They pilot tested 144 standards. A key part of the NAA is their involvement with public policy and advocacy. Howe has met with Senator Kennedy for example, to get his input, so the politician could help with the Association’s cause. Dara Rose, Program Officer from the Wallace Foundation, talked about the Foundation supporting schools during out-of-school time in Boston, Providence, Chicago, New York, and Washington D.C. They are looking at data about who is versus is not being served in out-of-school learning in order to impove equity, access, and quality for youth. Education reform is at the heart of their work, Ms. Rose says. They are developing mechanisms to monitor programs for quality and to understand participation-who is participating and how often. They are looking in out-of-school programs to achieve on an academic and a socioeconomic level. Rick Weissbourd, on faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Kennedy School of Government and Founder and Co-Founder of ReadBoston and WriteBoston talked about a lack of infrastructure and assessment for how kids are doing socially and emotionally. He spoke about the small number of kids with behavior challenges that teachers do not have the ability to help as contributing to the hardship in helping kids. He also talked about kids having vision problems, sleep deprivation, and parents who have depression. He said that the parental depression leads parents to feeling helpless and hopeless, and although many are doing a wonderful job, it is harder for them to read to their children, talk to kids, or go to school meetings. Eric Schwarz, President and CEO of Citizen Schools, said that afterschools on a national level have plateaued in the last few years. He said afterschools are often seen as an afterthought rather than a major help to kids in the country. He talked about a need to reframe the issues. Afterschool could be a good time to learn science he says. Also, an afterschool movement could be built by greater focus on older children (perhaps tying into things like Oprah’s programs on dropouts). Afterschools could reach out to older youth in danger of dropping out. Schwarz further talked about No Child Left Behind being up for reauthorization. Perhaps, afterschool groups could find a way to leverage their goals with NCLB. If afterschool programs are associated with science and helping dropouts they might reach more people. Discussion included comments on: Adaptive versus technical change-the need for a common framework about child and youth development with the objective of not providing a service but creating functional adults. The need for high quality assessment of children. A different conceptualization of what mental health is-not counseling, but using preventive actions. What teaching schools are doing to promote social and emotional development for young teachers. Noting that the afterschool field is a very young field and mistakes and successes will be made. Research for afterschool programming is underfunded and there’s a need to learn from other fields to move forward. The integration of school and afterschool may be needed rather than afterschool seeming like the one savior. The panel concluded that “We have a lot of work ahead of us.” |
CONFERENCES
5th Annual PEAR Conference
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