Recently, STEAM has caught on as a buzzword in K-12 and afterschool learning. Short for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math, STEAM is more than a subject area. It is meant to be an interdisciplinary way to develop creative problem-solving skills in youth.

The arts have a profound impact on youth, educators, and educational environments (Fiske, 1999). In fact, the arts have the ability to:

Read a New Book Month

Month of September

It's read a new book month! The perfect time to add a few books to your STEM afterschool program! Here are four titles I love that take on STEM topics and practices.

Everyone wants to get new employees onboard and working effectively with youth as quickly as possible. What does it really take to prepare a new employee to work in out-of-school time programs?

Across the country, August can be a time of transition and stress. Starting the school year is a change for the whole family. Here are some tips to share with the families in your summer programs to help them prepare for these changes.

Summer is winding down, and everyone's gearing up for the next school year. It always seems to go by so fast! I feel like every summer I have a long to-do list, both personally and professionally, and it never fails that I don't complete everything on my list (or like this summer any of the things on my list). 

By some measures, there are more youth of color in the U.S. than white students, yet the afterschool and K-12 workforce remains largely white, middle-class, and female. It's more important now than ever to think about ways to make sure you are including all of your youth.

Almost every afterschool setting should be prepared to support students and families whose first language is not English. Although there are many factors to consider when working with English-language learners, I wanted to share a few tips and tricks to help you prepare yourself and your program to welcome and include ELL's. 

Designing and facilitating a dynamic, enriching, hands-on, active project-based summer program. The key to dynamic, enriching, hands-on and fun summer programming is to facilitate in-depth activities covering multiple curricular areas building upon each other over the course of the summer. While allowing student ownership which creates energy and buy-in on their part.