Promoting Social Emotional Skills

By Guest Blogger, Jennifer Peck, Executive Director, Partnership for Children and Youth

(Note: Much of this commentary first appeared on EdSource on April 29, 2015. To view the entire article, along with others, please click here.)

Jennifer Peck

With the introduction of new Common Core State Standards, teachers and administrators can concentrate on helping students develop the ability to collaborate, create, communicate and think critically. There is growing recognition that strengthening students’ social and emotional skills is essential to developing those abilities, and thus critical to success in school, the workplace, and in life generally.

Further good news is that schools don’t have to do this work on their own. In California, a strong network of expanded learning programs – operating after school and in the summer – are already experienced at helping young people build social-emotional skills. Their practices are specifically designed to help children:

• learn about themselves,
• relate to other people, and
• develop confidence about learning.

This work by California’s expanded learning community is guided by new Quality Standards for Expanded Learning. The state is using these standards to inform its decisions about program funding, and schools, program providers and parents can use them to identify high quality programs and practices.

A robust after-school and summer strategy helps ensure that all children are developing the social-emotional skills they need to function well in the classroom. It also adds at least 740 hours to the 1,080 hours of school year learning. That extra learning time is not a luxury. The research on summer learning loss, for example, documents that the failure to use this time well has significant negative impacts on children, particularly those whose families cannot afford to pay for camps, trips, and other enriching activities.

California has more than 4,500 publicly funded expanded learning programs, most of which are located in schools in our state’s lowest-income communities. These programs add great value to the work of schools, but too often work in isolation. As a recent Partnership for Children and Youth report documents, when schools think outside the classroom and develop partnerships that expand the day and the year and offer opportunities to learn in different ways, kids benefit.

Let’s use this additional learning time to make sure all children have the social-emotional skills they need to thrive in school, work and life.
_______________________

Jennifer Peck was a founding staff member of the Partnership in 2001 and became its executive director in 2003.  Through her leadership, the Partnership has developed and implemented initiatives to finance and build after-school and summer-learning programs, and increase access to school meals and nutrition education programs in the Bay Area’s lowest-income communities. Jennifer leads a coalition of California organizations advocating for new federal policies to improve the effectiveness of after-school and summer-learning programs. To learn more about the Partnership and sign up for their e-newsletter, visit their website. 

Provide Input on California's New Afterschool Quality Standards

By Sam Piha

Sam Piha,
Quality Standards
Work Group Member

The California Work Group on Quality Standards is drafting recommendations for statewide program quality standards to submit to the CDE After School Division in June.  We have drafted all 11 standards which are awaiting your input here. The Learning in Afterschool & Summer learning principles were very influential and are well-represented in the standards.

The draft standards are shown below. I hope you will take a few minutes to add your ideas and perspectives to this next step of our work.  Your input is critically important to setting the vision and expectations for after school and summer programs across the state.  Thanks!  

Here are the 11 standards – provide your input here 

Clear vision, mission and purpose: The program has clearly defined vision, mission, goals, and measurable outcomes that are shared and supported by stakeholders, and are understood and used by the program at all levels to drive program design, implementation and improvement.

Safe and supportive climate:  The program provides a safe and nurturing environment that supports the developmental, emotional and mental health needs of all students.

Active and engaged learning:  Program design and youth activities reflect active, meaningful, and engaging learning methods that expand student horizons.

Skill building:  The program maintains high expectations for all students, intentionally links program goals and curricula with development of 21st-century skills and designs activities to help students achieve mastery.

Youth voice and leadership: The program provides and supports intentional opportunities for youth to play a meaningful role in program design and implementation, and sustains youth access to authentic leadership roles.

Healthy choices and behaviors:  The program provides all students with the opportunity to learn about and practice healthy eating, and physical activity in an environment that supports a healthy life style.

Quality Staff:  The program recruits and retains high quality staff and volunteers who are focused on creating a positive learning environment, and provides on going performance feedback and continuous professional learning experiences.

Diversity, Access and Equity: The program policies, procedures and services create an environment that values and embraces diversity and equity regardless of race, color, religion, sex, age , income level, national origin, physical ability, sexual orientation and/or gender identity and expression.

Collaborative relationships:  The program intentionally builds and leverages collaborative relationships among internal and external stakeholders to achieve program goals.

Continuous quality improvement:  The program continuously utilizes a variety of information to improve its outcomes and the quality of its design, activities, and management.

Program management and sustainability: Program has sound fiscal and administrative practices supported by well-defined and documented policies and procedures that meet grant requirements and support sustainability.

For more information, go to the California Afterschool Network's website by clicking here.