Centro Cultural
Statewide
Stronger Staff, Stronger Students: Unique Investment in Out-of-School Pays Off
Say your children or grandchildren go to an afterschool program. Amidst the art projects and homework time, something powerful is happening — something that could change the course of their lives. Especially if they live in Oregon.
That’s because Oregon has done something few other states have: figured out how to train, support and professionalize the workforce of caring adults who guide out-of-school time programs.
It turns out that what’s good for the adults — consistent professional development, a peer network, in-the-moment expert support — also pays off for the students they serve. Research shows that students in high-quality out-of-school time programs are more likely to succeed in school and in life.
This transformational shift is led by the Out-of-School Time Initiative, a partnership between Oregon Community Foundation and The Ford Family Foundation.
Over the past 13 years, the Initiative has invested $17 million in more than 70 community organizations and schools. Tens of thousands of middle school students have benefitted, primarily students of color, students in under-resourced rural communities, and students from low-income families.
“This training has helped our staff look at things in a different way,” says Antonio Jackson, Co-founder and Executive Director of Building Blocks 2 Success, a Portland-based STEM program with afterschool and summer options. “Students feel like they’re being seen and heard. When students leave here, they feel confident that they can do anything.”
Filling the Adults’ Backpacks
To understand why Oregon’s focus on the out-of-school time workforce is so unusual, it’s helpful to understand the industry itself. Average wages for staff who work with youth hover around Oregon’s hourly minimum of $13.70 to $15.95 for positions that are often an employee’s first role.
Inexperienced, unsupported staff may struggle to connect with students, especially those navigating the volatile middle school years, when minor frustrations may trigger major outbursts. Employee absenteeism can be high, and annual turnover can top 40%.
Building Blocks 2 Success
These conditions destabilize programs that would otherwise be ideal settings for building connections with students and teaching them the social-emotional skills that are essential to a flourishing adulthood.
“Imagine a backpack. We fill a kid’s backpack with tools they can use in class. We don’t fill the staff’s backpacks with tools they can use with kids,” says bob Maureen, a youth development facilitator who works with programs across the country. What Oregon does is “super special. I wish I could take some of the OCF program managers, put them in my pocket, and take them with me when I go other places.”
Building Organizational Capacity
Through the Initiative, schools and organizations receive three-year cycles of funding, training and coaching, says Belle Cantor, Senior Program Officer for Education for Oregon Community Foundation. Their programs are reviewed by trained internal and external assessors using a nationally recognized, research-based tool. It measures factors like physical and emotional safety, positive relationships, and whether the program gives students opportunities to learn, build skills, and lead.
Once they see how they stack up, programs enter a continuous improvement process, choosing three focus areas and using data to track their progress. Goals could include building stronger connections to academics, setting clear expectations for youth or integrating culturally relevant materials into the program.
Trail Running Program, Building Healthy Families
“We’ve learned that we don’t just want to provide homework help or just want to provide outdoor skills,” says Maria Weer, Executive Director of Building Healthy Families, a program based in Baker, Malheur, Union and Wallowa counties.
“We’ve learned that we have this opportunity to instill confidence, to instill positive relationships, and that all this can happen through just some tweaks in our programming and in the training and coaching of our staff.”
Participants get time away from work for training, which is rare in the field. Support continues throughout the year, with access to specialized training and experienced coaches on call to answer questions and offer support.
“The benefit of this work with OCF has been the number of years they’ve supported us,” says Clay Higgins, Chief Operations Officer of the Boys & Girls Club of Corvallis. “You can’t make organizational change overnight.”
Flipping the Lid
Much hinges on a child’s ability to feel, recognize and manage their emotions. Research has shown a clear link between mastery of social and emotional skills and improved academic performance, employability, and better health and well-being.
Effective social-emotional learning can “prevent catastrophic outcomes, such as unwanted pregnancy, arrests for violent crime or dropping out of high school,” according to David S. Yeager, a University of Texas-Austin researcher who studies adolescent development.
But these skills aren’t always taught at home or in school. That’s where afterschool programs step in.
The Initiative focuses intently on building the social-emotional skills of out-of-school time staff, because “staff has to acknowledge their own social-emotional learning journey in order to teach it or role model it for kids,” Weer says.
Facilitators walk participants through the structure of the brain, showing which regions are linked to emotional reactivity and which govern emotional regulation. During one training session, facilitator Lena Fox asked participants to name their favorite emotion — and the emotion they avoid feeling at all costs. The exercise dispelled the myth of bad emotions and showed that each emotion is important to feel, whether you’re a kid or an adult. We can’t control our feelings, participants learned, but we can control our reactions — and so can students.
Trainers teach staff how to use simple hand gestures to help students communicate their emotions.
A closed fist means that they’re feeling calm and in control. A palm facing down means they’re feeling agitated, frustrated or overwhelmed. An outward-facing palm means they’ve “flipped the lid,” are what’s known as “emotionally dysregulated,” and need a moment to collect themselves.
“Yes, it’s nice to learn your math and your science and your social studies, but to really get on in today’s world you need to know how to navigate relationships,” says Albert Garcia, Site Manager of the Molalla River Middle School afterschool program Todos Juntos.
"Allowing them to name those emotions and validate how they’re feeling puts them a step ahead of a child who’s not able to understand what they’re feeling and why they’re feeling it.”
A Shift in Perception
Out-of-School Time participants say the initiative has changed how they see their role. Far more than tutors or camp counselors, they can have a profound impact on a child’s life.
“The stages of school from fifth grade to middle school and from eighth grade to high school are significant transitional periods. You know, the whole world is changing around them,” says Clay Higgins, Chief Operations Officer of the Boys & Girls Club of Corvallis. “If students have the confidence in themselves, things can be tough, but they will figure out how to overcome it. They’ll keep with it. They’ll graduate. They’ll create a plan for their future.”
The Initiative has given Amy Gray’s staff “belief in ourselves.” The Director of Programs for Arts in Education of the Gorge, Gray manages afterschool arts enrichment programs across six Oregon and Washington counties. She compares out-of-school time to gardening.
“We’re preparing the soil. We’re watering. We’re taking care of all these essential things so that they can grow, and if we do all of that, then when they go to school, they can learn math,” Gray says. “We really are just as important as their education in school.”