Today, students' academic achievement is slowly seeing a return to pre-pandemic trends. Researchers do not estimate a full recovery in the near future, and studies show students continue to struggle with feelings of stress, isolation, anxiety, and depression. As the nation seeks solutions to help young people amidst these struggles, voters and…

Background: Situated in urban Philadelphia, Autores Fuertes was part of a network of nonprofit community writing centers that provided a free afterschool writing academy for children ages 7 to 17. With a full-time lead educator and assistant educator, alongside several volunteer community educators, this center promoted itself as a…

Out-of-school time (OST) initiatives, defined as programs that operate in and out of school settings, serve young people, their families, and the communities around them. These initiatives are often created to close opportunity gaps that can exist for at-risk students and to meet the needs of previously assessed concerns for communities. For the…

As communities grapple with the harmful, inequitable effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which have been particularly hard on low-income and marginalized youth, renewed attention has been directed toward how out-of-school time (OST) programs can help youth reconnect and re-engage. In this article, the results of a systematic literature review on the…

Jon's Heroes in Training (JHT) represents a strong cross-sector collaboration that was created and has evolved over the past five years. JHT is an after-school program where children (ages 3-22) with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosis come to the local university to engage in high-quality physical education lessons designed and…

Principal Salome Thomas-EL is "crazy about the kids" in his school. He's "curious about them and the lives they lead" at home and in the community. He is committed to being a "consistent adult" they can rely on and to maintaining a "culture of love and support for every child." In this inspirational and…

This article takes up three interrelated elements of Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy into an initial conceptual framework for moral education and explores a practical application of this framework to a lesson plan. The three elements are moral vocabulary, moral perception, and the quality of our states of consciousness. The framework constituted…

The Young Olympians Program was developed to further a partnership between a university and the local Boys and Girls Club in central Illinois. The program was developed to improve youth participants' academic efficacy and social and emotional learning, while also engaging them in physical activity. This article shares the project-management stages…

A growing movement suggests that social and emotional learning (SEL) should be integrated into educational experiences in and outside schools. Afterschool programs can be particularly well suited for SEL, and afterschool educators can play an important role in skill development. We interviewed 23 experienced afterschool educators in…

In the midst of an international debate about immigration, this qualitative ethnographic study focuses on the stories and teaching practices of immigrant and refugee educators working with immigrant and refugee youth at a community-based after-school programme in the Midwestern region of the USA. Using existing literature to describe the…

The Wallace Foundation commissioned Research for Action and McClanahan Associates to study how out-of-school time intermediaries (OSTIs) responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and the role they could play in supporting communities moving forward. Citywide out-of-school time (OST) systems encompass a wide variety of afterschool and summer programs and…

After-school programs are potential contexts that may promote positive youth development (PYD) and reduce problem behaviors among African American children. One way after-school programs may be associated with reduced problem behaviors is by fostering an affirming sense of identity. Prior research on racial-ethnic identity among African American…

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has administered the federally-funded Nita M. Lowey 21st Century Community Learning Center (21st CCLC) grant program, also known as Title IV, Part B, of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) since 2002. The purpose of the program is to create community learning centers that provide students with…

This study sought to understand the influence of participation in a physical activity-based, social and emotional learning-focused after-school. Undergraduate students (N = 25) from a variety of ethnic backgrounds participated in semi-structured interviews and regular journaling. Data were analyzed inductively and deductively through the lens of…

A powerful way to build students' mathematical power and agency is through Teaching Mathematics for Social Justice (TMfSJ), where students read and write the world with mathematics (Gutstein, 2005). Reading the world with mathematics uses mathematics to understand relations of power, resource inequities, and disparate opportunities between…