Professional Development and Technical Assistance

The Center conducts professional development sessions across the country, and widely disseminates professional development tools and publications, reaching thousands of afterschool staff, leaders, networks, and administrators each year.

As we engage with practitioners, leaders, and organizations, we seize the opportunity to learn. Every session is a learning experience that keeps us grounded and connected to today's challenges and opportunities.

Our professional development sessions are tailored to the world of afterschool and designed for afterschool staff at all levels.  Participants come from urban, rural, and small-town settings. Most share similar program goals and demographics, such as:

• Providing academic enrichment and homework time
• Enrolling between 60 and 80 youth
• 75% of the children qualifying for free and reduced-priced lunch
• 30% of the children being English language learners

• System-Building: Afterschool Academies
• Training Trainers: Technical Assistance

System-Building: Afterschool Academies

Our fieldwork informs system-building efforts. Supported by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Afterschool Academies are a collaborative effort to create an intensive three-day institute that shows how to blend academic content and youth development to best serve children and youth holistically. This model is being brought to state systems for quality-building.

The Center's partners in developing and delivering Afterschool Academies include:

• Citizen Schools
• The Community Network for Youth Development
• Gary and Eve Moody
• The YouthLearn Initiative at Education Development Center

The partnership will develop a guide, expected in 2009, to bring learning to the field, showing statewide networks and others how to draw on local expertise to plan and conduct an Academy or similar institute.

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Up Next: Learn more about Building the Field of Afterschool.