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The concept of academic freedom has not always existed. In theory, perhaps since the first teaching institutions, but in practice here in the United States it did not take hold until 1940 in the Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. This document was authored not by the state, but jointly authored by the American Association of University Professors, a membership organization founded in 1915 to give voice to the developing field of university professors that was under stress from conservative college and university boards and funders. The issue that created this organization, migrant workers rights in the classroom led to a professor being fired.

Out-of-School may be very different work, but we need a free voice in developing our practices and the ability to promote what is unique about our work. Many programs are seen by the mainstream as disposable additions to the day of children and youth. Arts, sports, enrichment through hands on activities, social emotional development, are often seen as "soft skills" or done by "wide eyed 21 year olds" (personal communication, 2008) who lack classroom management when what Out-of-School Time workers are trying to create is not a classroom but a learning community.

This blog has been an experiment in such academic freedom - a developing voice to stimulate ideas and to demonstrate that the Out-of-School field is a growing area that offers children and youth opportunities they cannot get anywhere else.

We'd like to hear that this experiment has merit. In the past three months there have been over 350 readers from Massachusetts, across the United States, all countries in South America, and one reader in Africa. This is exciting that our local work can have such an impact. We invite readers to comment or e-mail a few words of support or concern so we can better assess this endeavor.

Thanks

The BOSTnet Roundtable Year in Review

2008/2009 Leadership Roundtable Series Reflection

Overview
For fourteen years, BOSTnet’s Leadership Roundtables have been one of the many professional development services we provide to the out-of-school time (OST) field. They are a key activity in our approach to quality improvement that focuses on building staff skills around identified field competencies. This past year, we updated the format and began holding Roundtables in communities outside of Greater Boston that have limited networking and professional development opportunities. In the past the Roundtable relied on panel discussions in which participants discussed effective practices used in their programs. This season’s offerings combined networking opportunities with research-based training presentations and collegiate conversations to foster a more inclusive learning community. Training topics were sequenced to build a body of core knowledge and to meet the needs of program staff for professional development credits through the Department of Early Education and Care. Thanks to the generous support of For Kids Only After School, Inc., BOSTnet re-launched the Leadership Roundtable on the North Shore while the Shapiro Foundation, the Boston Foundation, State Street, and others provided support for the Boston series to continue into its fourteenth year.

Review of Activities
The sequencing of events was an original concept. It has long been recognized that staff at OST programs experience turnover during or after the summer and there is a need for refresher materials at the beginning of the academic year with older staff in new positions or assuming new program projects. To address this need to orientate OST staff (including directors, coordinators, and new staff), BOSTnet launched the fall series with Quality Environments for Youth, an overview of what makes OST programs a unique developmental setting for youth, how it differs from formal education environments, and its potential as the primary pathway to healthy youth development. This environmental approach to building quality programs represents BOSTnet’s view of the field as a complimentary support for children and youth from what they receive during the school day.
The series continued with Promoting Positive Behavior, purposely front-loaded at the beginning of the academic year to address behavioral and group management issues as programs are assembling. Behavioral support training is consistently one of most requested and well-attended trainings we offer. As the year continued, Project-Based Learning provided a working structure for programs to intentionally frame enrichment activities, meet academic standards, and allow program staff to develop their own fun and engaging projects. The beginning of the Spring Series we had the opportunity to dig down into more complex issues that are a perpetual challenge for providers, including accountability and inclusion. To help support programs faced with shifting expectations and increasingly complex requirements, BOSTnet surveyed the many different tools for measuring program quality and provided a forum for programs to discuss some current issues they are facing in obtaining meaningful data. Inclusion also raised many questions for programs that are seeing many disabilities manifest as behavioral challenges – especially as the definition of disability is shifting to include social-emotional or cognitive disorders. The final Roundtable in the 2008–2009 series set for May 7th, Effective OST Communication in a Digital Age, will discuss program communication, outreach, and new web-based technology.

The presentations provided built upon the knowledge we have gained over the past few years running the Lead to Opportunities for Youth with Disabilities (LOYD), Promoting Positive Behavior, Engaging Families, the Facilities Initiatives, as well as best practices gathered from BOSTnet’s fieldwork. Leadership Roundtables on the North Shore were hosted by different organizations such as Girls Inc., the YMCA of Greater Lynn, Boys and Girls Club of Salem, Community Teamwork, Inc., and the North Shore Community College department of Education who also generously provided refreshments. The Boston Public Library where wireless Internet allowed for “real time” web searches and video feeds hosted Boston Roundtables. Every roundtable was evaluated and reflected upon on the day of the event, elevating key issues and capturing quotes and conversations, while providing transparency as to effectiveness and participant satisfaction. Reflections were posted on the BOSTnet blog at www.bostnet.blogspot.com and indexed according to topic or initiative. Comments were welcome to these pages by interested parties and attendees, allowing for anonymous comments to create a higher level of academic freedom and dialogue in the field. Research support was provided by Michael Bennett Monica Zgola handled logistics. Evaluations were developed and reviewed by Manosi Datta.

Observations
Over the past year we have connected to many great programs and staff and heard inspiring stories from staff that are working hard to make a difference in the lives of children and youth. Nearly 500 attendees participated in the 2008/2009 Leadership Roundtables in Boston and the North Shore. The level of experience of attendees was on average ten years or more in the field. Some commented that they felt most professional development was not raising their abilities but “refreshing” strategies or approaches they already felt confident they knew. There was also consistent representation by “line staff” however; this was more the case for Boston than the North Shore.

Programs are stressed by shifting and increasingly unrealistic expectations, inconsistent directions set by funders and policy makers, and, of course, the economy. Many see a diminishing of the community they found in the OST movement, and are interested in continuing to network and share ideas. A major obstacle to this is the limited funding strategies available to programs that creates a more competitive environment and less cohesion in the movement. Many current leaders (many attendees over 20 years in the field) wonder about the upcoming leaders that are needed to keep the field growing and strong. Response to the Leadership Roundtables was positive, as evidenced by solid attendance, increases in blog readership, and positive reviews collected in evaluations. With fewer professional development dollars available and increasing professional development requirements for licensed programs, many providers see BOSTnet’s Roundtables as their primary staff-training option. We will continue to use participant’s feedback to improve our offerings to better serve the field. A few of the suggestions we are currently evaluating include providing specific Roundtables for different level staff, and providing more afternoon trainings for direct staff when they have paid program time.

The Coming Year
We are currently working with partners to plan the upcoming series and expand the Roundtables in the South Shore and Central Massachusetts for the 2009/2010-year. As BOSTnet assumes its role as the Massachusetts’ affiliate for the National Afterschool Association, some changes may be made to both the delivery and geographic reach of our Roundtables. We are constantly developing new topics and refining old ones based on lessons learned from our fieldwork and research. In collaboration with the DEEC, Roundtables will be evaluated according to standard expectations of training organizations and other entities may be involved in delivering these events or informing the content. Funding for these events may be provided by organizations acting in unison, as was demonstrated by organizations on the North Shore this past year, or assistance may come from private or governmental channels as has traditionally supported the Boston series. The series topics with locations and hours will be listed on www.bostnet.org.

Technology and Out-of-School Time

There is a great deal of information out there through various media. We hear about newspapers being shuttered while also the ascendancy of new forms of communication that not only replace the paper format, but redefine how we communicate and construct knowledge.

That is not to say that the only thing we are constructing is knowledge. There is a great deal of clutter and with each advancement in communication, there seems to be an equal advancement in people's ability to turn something good into yet another stream of trash. The academic papers and open discussions of the Internet became chat rooms and.... pictures of questionable taste. E-mail became SPAM. Viral ideas, became viruses and Trojans or other malware. "Maleware" became a word.

Some react to these forces with a heightened sense of danger. Filter, restrict, create hoops to gain privilege to the network - and this is program staff not an attitude to children or youth. Others have taken the everything new is a new opportunity and jumped further and further to the "bleeding edge" (beyond the "cutting edge" for those of you old enough to remember proper grammar). Some organizations have unloaded millions of hard-raised dollars for web pages, search features, and Java script and encouraged others to "join the digital age." However, the non-profit sector in general and Out-of-School Time in particular seem to have not found a way to raise themselves above the clatter, hold on to a certain amount of control while realizing that new-technology redefines host and user content and may offer a more transparent window into their work - whether they like what outsiders are seeing or not.

Out-of-School programs are slowly coming into the digital age - as are training providers, OST researchers, and other supporting institutions as organizations jump in often using models applied by the corporate world or from personal experience (the hey, I use myspace with my friends so....). This topic will be explored at an upcoming Boston Roundtable organized by BOSTnet Thursday May 7th from 9:30 - 12PM at the Boston Public Library. If you would like to discuss what you do to promote your organization, meet funder needs, or integrate technology into what you bring to children and youth, please attend and be prepared to visit your website and tell others about how this or that aspect of technology captures an audience - or you feel drives away community.

Over ten years after the dot-com bubble/boom/bust, we continue to ask ourselves, is Twitter really going to help us? and then Twitter that exact message so our friends all know what we're doing now is wondering.

For more information on the May 7th Boston Leadership Roundtable or to participate go to www.bostnet.org.

Behavior in Out-of-School Time

Reflecting on a number of trainings on Promoting Positive Behavior, BOSTnet's approach to behavior in OST, there has been a number of trainees from all program levels who have asked, "what's up with kids today?"

It seems that many in the field claim that there has been a shift in difficult behaviors in the past five or ten years making them question what is happening with children these days and how can programs respond.

"I used to be able to call a parent," one site coordinator said, "[children] are like... go head, call my house I don't care!" Another training had people wondering whether there were more difficult children being placed in OST for a number of reasons (vouchers being given to children with special needs - many of these needs disabilities with a high behavioral component) or whether there was a change in how children act and how parents are raising their kids. These comments perhaps can be dismissed as an aging workforce looking to the past with nostalgia or getting weary of the repeating behaviors year after year as different children express challenging behaviors. It may also be that the supports - a challenge/strategy approach - is not able to address the issues since there are so many factors that make each individual situation different. A child likes to lick other children. This child seems to have a developmental issue that is not diagnosed. The staff have talked to the parent, met with teachers, reinforce positive behavior at the program, but still, Sally licks other children. "We've done so many interventions" the staff say. Now what? Listening to many staff talk about their solutions there were some situations that have been so complex that there is no "out of the box" solution (such as in a case where the strategy is clear but there is no staff available to follow this strategy because it takes time that the already stretched program does not have - how at a training can the trainer invent more time?). Perhaps this is because much of the materials for behavior are borrowed and "adapted" for out of school but they retain much of their original more formal approach to a youth environment - that of the day school. Is OST behavior different? Screaming and punching, no, that is still an issue, but is there a scope of acceptable noise and movement that may appear more messy? "I look for a healthy noise" one director remarked.

Another issue is that program staff want to create a different kind of relationship in their program between children and between staff and children. This is marked by informality, active discussion, and relying on strong relationships to promote a positive environment for youth. Many issues staff have with behavior seem to stem from their having to switch back and forth from caring adult to trying to recreate a classroom environment. With more programs working in school facilities or partnering with schools, what are the dynamics of being known as "Sue" inside the OST program room but "Ms. Watson" with the same children but in the hallway? There are challenges in maintaining each relationship - and perhaps many staff seeing even greater difficulty in achieving both.

Behavior support is one of the most popular BOSTnet trainings and consistently the highest attended Roundtable (in all locations). Some trainers have joked that they can make any training popular just by throwing in the word "behavior." In a previous post on BOSTnet's Inclusion Roundtable was the reflection that in the discussion on Inclusion, the issues raised was not so much how to include children of all needs but "what do I do with Johnny who throws things does not listen and may have ADD ADHD learning disabilities and has not been diagnosed and we are not provided the one-on-one he gets in school."

As programs are preparing to be judged or rated by various systems or departments, how can behavior be approached in a way where the apparent chaos may not be, in the context of an approach developed specifically for OST, anything other than positive noise?

Program Profiles on Youtube

As part of BOSTnet's on-going series of on-line program profiles, KidsArts! was featured. A program that was founded by families almost two decades ago to provide arts education and child care, KidsArts! is currently operating in the recreational area of an historic church in Jamaica Plain. The program has an arts focus, but at the center of this program is building a community of learners and taking care of children. The staff are all artists who are trained to provide educational enrichment and act as teachers. The program takes in children from many schools as well as children who are home schooled. This program is an example of a small scale independent program that fills an important role in the community and may represent the kind of program that appears to have a high level of quality, but that quality may look very different to a more standardized approach. That the program has lasted almost two decades (with one staff member there from the beginning of the program) demonstrates that individual community-based solutions are not necessarily temporary situations depending on a certain group of parents or a limited scope of activities. While KidsArts! may have been created to fill a void left by the cuts in arts funding and programming in the day school so many years ago, the program is no longer about the deficits of formal educational programming. KidsArts! today provides parents of different economics as well as parenting strategies a vibrant learning community for their children. There may be hundreds of similar programs throughout the Commonwealth that do similar work.

LOYD: Boston Inclusion Roundtable

The BOSTnet Inclusion Roundtable brought together a small number of program directors, direct care staff, and Inclusion specialists. The presentation initiated a great deal of conversation around the sorts of supports that Out-of-School Time can offer children and youth with disabilities and the need for increased funding of staff development to ensure that programs can provide a quality environment.

What was interesting was that unlike the last roundtable, this group did not say that they lacked the same supports as the school day because they questioned the supports of the school day itself. One support was the "one-to-one aide." It is common to hear many Out-of-School professionals mention that children they include in their programs are done so without the support of these aides and this reduces the quality of their program both for the individual who requires the support by day and for the other program participants. At the Roundtable, many questioned whether the aide model was good for the child in school or whether it set that child apart and allowed teachers and students to remove themselves from care-giving. One OST program staff said that it was a good thing that they did not have aides and that these children who were provided aides or sent to special programs within the school for the majority of the academic day were included in an authentic way during their program time (some mentioned that severe mobility impairment or intense mental or cognitive disabilities that lead to aggressive behavior may need additional supports). This was an interesting to hear since it is very common to hear lists of program challenges around Inclusion rather than a confident point of view that said "schools should learn from us about what we do" rather than "we are deficient in this area without funding."

There was a great deal of talk about how many schools continue to exclude children and youth with disabilities - and that these programs while they may not take place during the entire day are often in re-purposed areas of the school facility; basements, former bathrooms, former closets, former mechanical rooms. While many said that their programs operated in less-than-optimal facility environments, many programs felt that their program did a better job of including children or youth with special needs so that the physical space did not move these members of the community "out of sight." Some of the attendees had personal experiences with the Special Education system and spoke directly of being in a "closet classroom." One staff member said that he was diagnosed with a learning disability while the school support staff never questioned why he had missed so much school in the previous years. So the issue treated was the inability to read "on grade level" not the social issue of truancy. He claimed that this experience of being in Special Education classes increased his difficulties with school rather than elevating them - the primary reason being social/emotional not whether the mechanics of reading were being taught in a different way. His ability to be excepted by peers was impacted as well as self esteem. Another attendee picked up this thread and asked how it was that schools seem to teach exclusion during the day and then leave it to programs to "un-teach" what they have done. "We have to much to do in just a few short hours... We got to show them a different point of view than their school... maybe their family... has on children with special needs" a staff from an arts program exclaimed. "Well, all children have special needs" another staff chimed in. "We have to see that the modifications we make benefit all the children in the program.... I mean, we do this for everyone, not to accommodate only a few."

In all, the Roundtable only briefly touched on the formal presentation. One highlight of the presentation was a short discussion of Dr. Gary Siperstein's work on Inclusion and his thoughts that Out-of-School Time programs actually are bridging the social barriers between children of different abilities and do so because the environments of these programs are focused on relationships first, activities second, and have a flexibility that many formal settings do not have (one example was a program that was in an old building so that mobility impaired children could only attend the basement. The program did not have money to get in an elevator, so they moved the most popular activities - media and computers - to the basement. This created a situation where youth who wanted to access the resources needed to confront the Inclusive nature of the program. One girl was so unfamiliar with interacting with others in wheelchairs that she refused to come in but would stand at the door. By having discussions and allowing interactions to grow organically, this child finally entered the room and got rid of her fears while the program developed a culture of Inclusion that remains to today).

It appears that while there remain challenges (especially around having funding for quality professional development) there is perhaps an emerging attitude of many program staff that they are able to provide a very high quality of service - even if that service does not look like solutions provided during the school-day. While research and the voices from the field tell us that Out-of-School Time is providing Inclusive environments, these programs in the room felt that they were not recognized for the work that they did or the successes they were having.

Quality Forum Countdown

There is a great deal of discussion in school-age programs around the new quality ratings system being devised by the EEC as there is about new EEC regulations and for many in the Out-of-School Time field, a larger discussion on quality of service and how best to measure unique contributions to youth development that these environments offer.

BOSTnet is planning a Quality Half-Day Forum and will attempt to bring together some of the current issues as well as examples of quality programs in a range of program types. This forum will soon be looking for presenters and identifying programs that can serve as an example of quality in action.

It is hoped that this forum covers a ranger of issues as well as providing concrete examples and tools or resources around how to improve quality at the point of service and some of the challenges in meeting larger system improvements. The Forum will contribute to the discussion on program quality at a time when more people are asking how much funding is needed to support quality programs.

The Quality Forum may touch on subjects such as supervision, retention and staff recruitment, STEM in Out-of-School Time, and other issues of quality such as the QRIS.

BOSTnet is looking for input from the field and welcomes thoughts or advice on what subjects are currently being sought and what resources may be the most useful to the field.

More information on the Forum can be found here or at www.bostnet.org