Addressing the Worker Shortage: Hiring Young People in Afterschool Programs

By Sam Piha

One of the major challenges facing the afterschool field is the worker shortage. One solution: expand our labor pool by hiring younger and older workers. 

One important way of addressing this worker shortage while improving program quality and its attractiveness to young people is to engage older youth and program alumni in the operation of the program. There are multiple benefits - both to the program and the young adults who are engaged as leaders or hired as staff.  

Who would know better about the benefits of hiring youth and program alumni than the young people who were granted this employment opportunity? In 2015 we interviewed youth who worked in an afterschool program. Below are some of their statements regarding their experiences. 

Lorena Retano, Program Alumni, Youth Institute

Lorena Retano, Age 18,

Youth Institute 

Program Alumni

Being a Youth Institute alumnus is probably one of the best things I’ve experienced. I’ve had the opportunity to work on multiple jobs teaching kids, younger than me, how to use movie and photograph editing software. The best example I have for what I experienced when being hired to work in an afterschool program was when I went to Richmond two summers ago to go teach iMovie, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe InDesign. A team of three other people and myself spent about six hours a day teaching kids in middle school and high school how to use the different software. It was really exciting to share my knowledge with other people.

To work in an afterschool program you need to have confidence in what you are doing with your students so that you are not only successful but so that your students respect you. Supporting youth and program alumni in practicing different skills is definitely a great way to develop that confidence.

David Montoya, Program Alumni, arc 


David Montoya, Age 20,
arc Program Alumni

I was a student of the after-school program for 4 years. After I graduated, the program offered me a job. It was a great opportunity since I was pretty familiar with the program - I knew what was going on and what needed to happen. At the beginning, it was a bit weird since I went from being a student to a staff. The staff was very supportive, the students saw me as their friend. It took me a while to set myself aside from them and to build a line and to show them that I am a staff now.

Being hired allowed me to go to school, have a job, and do something that I love. I brought everything that I knew about the after-school program. As a student participant, I gained leadership skills, which I used in my community, and most importantly at my school.

I think when people think of young adults they think of people who have no experience, who don’t know what they’re doing. But I think we are capable of taking on bigger responsibilities. We just need someone that would trust us and give us a chance.



Skhy Felder, Program Alumni, Youth Institute

Skhy Felder, Age 17,
Youth Institute Program Alumni

Employing program alumni gives them the opportunity to grow and gives them the feeling of being an adult. They understand the younger youth better because they, in a way, know the struggle they go through.



From this experience, I have an advantage for future jobs. I can’t wait to be a full staff member, give back to the youth and give them my knowledge. I want to be that staff that a youth would say, "I remember when so and so helped me through this".



 

 

Jon Cabral, Program Alumni, Youth Institute 


Jon Cabral, Age 18,
Youth Institute Program Alumni

The addition of older youth and program alumni into the team of afterschool professionals greatly affects the dynamic of the experience for both youth and staff alike. Working this past summer as technical instructor after finishing my third year as a high school program alumni student, it shifted from being the student inspired by mentors to the mentor inspiring students. Having been with the YMCA and its branches since sixth grade and having grown up with the program, I’ve definitely benefitted from having a young, relatable staff person, which I saw as my older sibling. Largely of who I am today is a result of the many young mentors I have had through the YMCA.



My responsibilities range from afterschool tutor assisting in homework questions and project help, to a mentor lending advice - a hand for help, a shoulder to cry on, or whatever else an adolescent teenager navigating through middle and high school would need. 



Coming back and being able to give back to the program that helped me grow gives me the gift of now being the person I needed when I was young. This job equipped me with technical, child development, and professional skill sets and provided me with advantages leading to my being a well-rounded person and professional.

Adriana Zuniga, Program Alumni, Youth Institute


Adriana Zuniga, Age 17,
Youth Institute Program Alumni

While working as an intern for the program, I experienced many benefits. I was able to get hands-on training from the staff and also teach younger kids the basics of computer literacy and camera functions. It gave me a chance to learn technological skills and help develop my social skills. Having been involved with the program for four years, I already know how the program runs, what is expected and how to do certain things that incoming interns are not familiar with yet. Because I already have experience, I can lead my own group of people on projects or inform them on how to use a Canon camera or edit a photograph on Photoshop.




David Molina, Program Alumni, A World Fit for Kids! 

David Molina, Age 27,
WFIT Program Alumni

I am an alumnus from A World Fit for Kids! Mentors In Motion (MIM) program at Belmont High School. I was a part of the program for 3 years. The Assistant Coach position was my first job that I held and I began to do it when I was 15 years old. The position was the dip of my toe in the water that is the real world. This position provided me my first professional experience that I ever had; it was a great learning platform.



When I graduated high school, I was fortunate enough to be asked to coach soccer at Lawrence Middle School, while I attended California State University Northridge. I was able to bring my 3 years of experience into the fields right off the bat. I knew the high standard of performance I had to deliver to the kids that I coached.



The wealth of knowledge that I gained was immense from the time I was a MIM. I always felt that the MIM program is a great resource to groom future coaches because the lessons taught are specific to the afterschool program and their expectations. These types of positions are usually entry level positions and they are usually a stepping stone to students’ eventual careers.



Jacob Reyes, Program Alumni, arc


Jacob Reyes, Age 21,
arc Program Alumni

The impact we have made is amazing. Hiring older youth helps communicate more with the students because we know how it is to be a student, we understand their feelings, and we can help them in the best possible way that we can.



I think that hiring program alumni is an important practice because the communications between alumni and students are close and more responsive. Students can go up to us and talk. They don't have to fear oppression of what a teacher or an adult might give them. They feel a sense of trust in us, which is good for a student.

 

TO LEARN MORE

You can learn more on this topic by reviewing 2 briefing papers that we developed to help afterschool programs hire older youth. 

Engaging Youth as Workers in Afterschool Programs

Engaging Youth as Workers Within High School Afterschool Programs

Engaging Youth in the 2020 Election

By Sam Piha

(This blog was authored prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. At this point the decision to re-open schools in the Fall, and afterschool programs, is not yet clear. Thus, at the end of the blog, we list some suggestions on how youth can be involved in the Fall election digitally.)

The 2020 election offers a number of opportunities to engage older youth and with recent Black Lives Matters escalating efforts, there is no better time for youth to be involved in making a change through the ballot box. We can frame these efforts as “meaningful participation”, “civic engagement”, “youth leadership” or “community service”. There are a number of organizations and initiatives that have designed curriculums, program tools and other materials to assist afterschool providers in their efforts to engage youth in the 2020 election.

Source: Getty Images

Did you know that young people can pre-register to vote at the age of 16-17? I didn’t, until I learned this from some of these materials below. There are a number of ways that youth can be involved in the 2020 election, even if they are not old enough to vote. These include sponsoring a voter registration event, supporting family and friend’s participation, uplifting stories and issues they care about, supporting a candidate’s campaign through volunteering or being part of the election process.

Donny Faaliliu,
After-School All-Stars, Los Angeles

We asked Donny Faaliliu, Director of Leadership and Community Outreach with After-School All-Stars, Los Angeles, how they are planning to engage youth in the 2020 elections. He responded, "After-School All-Stars, Los Angeles plans to engage our high school students through our youth leadership programs. The expectations would be for each school to host informative meetings on campus to educate students to use their voice through the voting process. The Democracy Class curriculum will help us to accomplish this goal. This curriculum is user friendly and the activity plans are easy to follow. It is a great resource for students because it provides valuable information on voter education, registration and the importance of voter turn-out. The webinar trainings were also very helpful and informative on how to best maximize this wonderful resource."

We also learned about how teachers and youth workers can use a video by rapper, Yellopain, entitled, "My Vote Don't Count," which can be viewed by clicking on the image below. 

Source: Yellopain, "My Vote Don't Count"

Below are a number of resources that you can check out:

• Growing Voters: 18 Ways Youth Under 18 Can Contribute to Elections
• Afterschool Alliance Election Toolkit
• Rock the Vote Democracy Class
• The Civics Center- Bringing Voter Registration to your School
• Ed Week: Michelle Obama Wants to Train Teachers to Help Students Vote
• New York Times- Election 2020: 11 Ways to Engage Students From Now Until November

You can also learn more by exploring these websites:

• Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE)
• Afterschool Alliance
• Rock the Vote
• The Civics Center

Digital tools for youth who want to engage in the 2020 election:

• Youth Service America Youth Service Briefing- Protect the 2020 Election from the Coronavirus

Making Way For Play: The Benefits For Kids, Older Youth And Adults

Source: A World Fit for Kids!

By Sam Piha

In a previous post, Is Play a Waste, we made the case that now is the time to reexamine the value of play, educate our stakeholders, and be unashamed to make play an important part of our afterschool programs. Below we open the door to this by explore some of the benefits of play and resources that may be useful.

Many afterschool programs prioritize an extension of academics and homework completion over organized play, free play, and physical activity.   

- The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds (1)

The Benefits of Play
 
According to experts “play allows children to use their creativity while developing their imagination, dexterity, and physical, cognitive, and emotional strength. Play is important to healthy brain development.” (2)

The gift of imaginative free play has been getting the short end of the stick for some time…play does not exclude learning. Play is the essence of learning and we have the research to back it up…We need to get this concept back into circulation with the mainstream that play is the highest form of learning!  

- 25 Quotes about the Importance of PLAY by Jayne Clare (3)

Rebecca Fabiano is Founder of FAB Youth Philly, which supports organizations and individuals that work with children and youth by focusing on improving program quality and providing professional development for staff. FAB Youth Philly also works directly with teens. In a newsletter, Rebecca wrote, “There's been so much interest in the last few years in the various ways that play can positively impact children's learning and their overall health and well being.  Play is so important that this report from August 2018 describes the ways in which doctors have begun to 'prescribe' play to their patients. ‘Play is not frivolous,’ the report says. Rather, research shows that play helps children develop language and executive functioning skills, learn to negotiate with others and manage stress, and figure out how to pursue their goals while ignoring distractions, among other things.”

Is Play Good for Older Kids? 
We tend not to give older kids a chance to play. When I taught 6th grade, my students loved visiting the kindergartners - not to be helpers or mentors, but to get a chance to play with the building blocks and other play things. In teens, we see play take different creative forms – theater, project-based learning, making beats, adventure challenges, etc. 

Clockwise: YMCA of Greater Long Beach; Sunset Neighborhood Beacon Center;
Youth Radio; and Spotlight: Girls

Hilary Conklin was a middle school teacher and is now an associate professor in the college of education at DePaul University in Chicago, where her research interests include the preparation of middle school social studies teachers. She writes, “One of the casualties of current education reform efforts has been the erosion of play, creativity, and joy from teenagers’ classrooms and lives, with devastating effects… And while play has gotten deserved press in recent months for its role in fostering crucial social-emotional and cognitive skills and cultivating creativity and imagination in the early childhood years, a critical group has been largely left out of these important conversations. Adolescents, too—not to mention adults, need time to play, and they need time to play in school…purposefully infusing play into middle and high school classrooms holds the potential for a more joyful, creative, and educative future for us all—a future in which kids have more interesting things to do in school than count down to summer break.” (4)

Is Play Good for Adults, too?
In a recent newsletter, Rebecca Fabiano writes, “The importance of play for children is well documented. Now researchers are turning their attention to its possible benefits for adults. What they’re finding is that play isn’t just about goofing off; it can also be an important means of reducing stress and contributing to overall well-being. This 2017 article from the Washington Post goes on to talk about why play is important for adults too.
We're sharing a link to a toy we use a lot in our staff meetings and trainings with adults and teens (see photo of the cubes below). They are so popular we've lost several cubes at some of our meetings and trainings. This is just one way you can encourage play or playfulness with adults.”

Source: Learning Resources

Rebecca goes on to offer a few “easy and low cost/free ideas to try:

• Ask staff to bring in a baby photo- hang them up and have everyone try to guess who the babies are.
• Have staff work together on a scavenger hunt.
• Have a dance off during lunch time!
• At your next staff meeting have one of the staff lead one of their favorite childhood games.
• Put out a puzzle in a shared space and encourage people to work on it together.”

A Few More Resources 
There are many resources on the topic of play. We cite a few below. 

Websites 

The power of play – Part 1-5: This is a 5-part series from Michigan State University The Power of Play 


The Genius of Play has created easy to use activities, provides expert advice and more. And it's all FREE for anyone to use.

Videos: There are many TED talks and other videos on play. Below are some that we like. 
• TED Talk by Stuart Brown entitled “Play is more than just fun” 

• TED Talk by Peter Gray entitled “The decline of play”

Programs Hungry for Recognition; Youth Ready to Weigh In

By Sam Piha

Sam Piha

Kim Boyer, Executive Director
Central Valley
Afterschool Foundation

Over the last few months, I've been honored to work with a dedicated group of afterschool advocates in Fresno, CA. This group included Kim Boyer (Central Valley Afterschool Foundation), Lori Carr (Fresno County Office of Education), Adam Valencia and Diane Wilcock (Tulare County Office of Education), Johannes Troost (California Department of Education - After School Division), Mike Snell (California Teaching Fellows Foundation), and Corey Newhouse (Public Profit). This group came together to donate their time to launch a program to acknowledge older youth afterschool programs that were well aligned with the  Learning in Afterschool & Summer (LIAS) learning principles with the awards coming in the form of digital badges.

Lori Carr, Fresno County
Office of Education

Now that the project is nearly complete, we asked them what stood out in conducting this effort. There were three themes: 1) programs are more than willing to put in some extra work if it will result in their being recognized for the good work they do;  2) young people are more than willing to take their time to observe and give feedback on the practices of afterschool programs; and 3) young people have plenty to say about what they consider as quality programs. 

Sharon Arce (Afterschool Program Site Coordinator)
 and Margo Perkins (Principal), Coalinga High

Brad Lupien, Co-President
ARC

Thanks to Brad Lupien and ARC for providing a one-day leadership retreat for those youth who observed and scored afterschool programs on their alignment to the LIAS learning principles. This may have been the first time in California that older youth have been involved in assessing the quality of older youth programs alongside local afterschool leaders.