After-School and Summer Enrichment Programs

Abstract

Research has demonstrated that nonschool hours provide a powerful opportunity for community-based organizations to help children and schools reach their academic goals. For example, Reginald Clark says, “Youngsters who engage in constructive learning activities outside of school are more likely to excel in school and in life than those who do not. By participating in a well-rounded array of activities, they are able to practice and thoroughly learn skills required for academic success.” Based on this knowledge, The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) aims to integrate after-school and summer enrichment programs with classroom instruction through a model that both supports the school’s academic mission and promotes healthy youth development. The vast majority of students in CAS’s 10 community schools, which are located in New York City, struggle with basic skills; in addition, more than half are Spanish speakers grappling with English as a second language. Their parents, teachers, and principals look to after-school and summer programs to help address their needs. The challenge for CAS is to answer this call in a way that is fun and engaging for children and achievable for program staff. A crucial feature of high-quality after-school programs is balanced programming. In keeping with this concept, CAS after-school programs offer children an array of purely recreational activities (such as sports, dance, and visual and dramatic arts) along with academically enriching curricula that meet children’s developmental needs and align with school standards. However, having strong curricula is only the first step. Critical to program quality has been the creation of a support system that incorporates key members of the school community and ensures that curricula are presented clearly so as to be accessible to a range of staff. Simply being located in a community school does not guarantee that an after-school program will align with the school’s academic goals for children. Rather, we have achieved this by partnering with the principal and lead teachers for program planning, by choosing curricula that support the school’s academic goals for children, and by hiring a lead teacher or staff developer from the school to serve as the after-school education coordinator.