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In seven sequential units, young people explore academic topics including how one learns, problem-solving, goal-setting and mindfulness.
Education programs complement and reinforce what youth learn during the school day while creating experiences that invite them to fall in love with learning. Rooted in social-emotional skills, programs in this area enable all youth to be effective, engaged, adaptive learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future. As an informal learning space, Clubs have an opportunity to offer both remediation and enrichment, all while inviting youth to discover and pursue passions that connect to future opportunities. Education programs include experiential learning, so that youth learn actively, through a “hands-on” and “mind-on” approach.
At each developmental stage, Education programs will prompt youth to plan and prepare for the future. This includes observing and practicing the social-emotional “soft skills” that lead to early successes in building and maintaining friendships, and engaging in programmatic experiences that prepare youth to learn and work in middle school, high school and beyond. Programs and experiences for elementary school-aged youth build the foundation for employability and career exploration, supporting the skill development necessary for success in post-secondary education and the workforce.
Education Outcome Statement: To enable all youth to be effective, engaged, adaptive learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future.
Education Skills: In order to successfully learn and work, youth need to build not only academic skills, but also social-emotional skills. Social-emotional skills help youth build healthy relationships with themselves and others, recognize and manage emotions, and solve problems. All Education programs, including Power Hour, are designed to build the academic and social-emotional skills that enable youth to become effective, engaged, adaptive learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future.
| Effective Learners | Engaged Learners | On Track to Graduate With a Plan for the Future | |
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Positive youth development is an intentional approach that engages youth in their communities, schools, organizations, peer groups, and families in a manner that is productive and constructive; recognizes, uses and enhances young people’s strengths; and promotes positive outcomes for young people by providing opportunities, fostering positive relationships and furnishing the support needed to build their leadership strengths.
Youth development practices that promote teaching and learning are key to the effectiveness of Education programs. Effective Education programs, when facilitated with high-quality youth development practices, help youth develop the attitudes, behaviors and skills needed to become effective and engaged learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future.
Youth development professionals can help all youth become more effective and engaged learners with the following practices:
Youth development professionals help all youth stay on track to graduate with a plan for the future using the following practices:
Inclusion is a core component to building a safe, positive environment in your Clubs. In order to fulfill our mission, Clubs must create safe, positive, and inclusive environments for all youth and teens – including every race, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, ability, socioeconomic status and religion. By creating inclusive environments in our Clubs, we improve the overall experience for all young people.
When youth development professionals use positive youth development practices, they help ensure all youth:
As you implement Power Hour, consider strategies that help youth feel affirmed, safe, and engaged with Club experiences that meet their needs and abilities. For more information on building and sustaining an inclusive environment, see pages 23-24 of the Program Basics BLUEprint, available at BGCA.net/ProgramBasics.
Positive Youth Development Supports Character and Social-Emotional Development
All programs, including Power Hour, offer opportunities for youth development professionals to model, recognize, reinforce and reflect on character development. Positive youth development provides direction for how you interact with, engage and model behavior for youth. You get to shape the lives of young people every day. As a result, you set the expectations and show youth what the essential character traits (i.e., caring, citizenship, fairness, respect, responsibility and trustworthiness) look like in practice. These character traits come to life when youth practice social-emotional skills like teamwork, conflict management and emotional regulation. Young people use skills to lead themselves and others, as well as demonstrate positive attributes in citizenship, like community engagement and voting.
Youth can start to build character using “caught and taught” approaches. Youth “catch” social-emotional skills when they observe youth development professionals modeling appropriate behaviors, and when they interact with peers. Youth can also be “taught” skills to build good character when skills are explicitly introduced and practiced through program sessions and activities. Use the following formula to understand how character develops over time:
Youth Development Professionals Model Good Character + Youth Practice Skills Regularly = Character Development
To build character traits, be sure to include many opportunities for youth to practice the social-emotional skills that are embedded in Power Hour. These include skills related to:
For more information, see Practicing Social-Emotional Skills to Achieve Character Development on page 22 of the Program Basics BLUEprint, available at BGCA.net/ProgramBasics. It will show you the specific social-emotional skills that young people should practice in order to demonstrate positive behaviors indicative of essential character traits.
Youth development professionals facilitating Power Hour can model good character in the way they support all learners, offer feedback rather than criticism, and encourage honesty and responsibility.
When character development is present:
When character development is absent:
Each session focuses on developing an important skill needed for Academic Success. Skills are introduced with a 30-minute session that contains a brief explanation and practice time to drive understanding. This is followed by one or two activities that reinforce the skill and expand the understanding and implications of each particular skill. Activities may be completed as follow-ups later in the week, or staff could choose to use these activities later in the school year for a quick review.
Start with Unit 1: Teamwork to build a Group Agreement that establishes community norms. Use the remaining skill-building units in any order. You could assess the needs of your youth, ask for their input, or ask local school administrators to recommend most-needed skills.
These sessions are designed to be used repeatedly, providing a structured approach to skill-building while engaging youth in active learning. Staff select an academic content area that needs review, clarification, or enrichment and then use one or more of these sessions to address the need.
Please see the Resources tab for an Overview of this targeted program.
In order to enable all young people, especially those who need us most, to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens, Boys & Girls Clubs focus on three priority outcome areas: Academic Success, Healthy Lifestyles, and Good Character and Citizenship. Power Hour is a foundational program in the Education Core Program Area, which supports positive outcomes in Academic Success. Many Clubs encourage all youth to participate in Power Hour at the beginning of each Club day, during that powerful time between school and home when Clubs can support youth in their academic endeavors. Power Hour offers opportunities for youth to learn new skills from youth development professionals and their peers, explore strategies they can use to be more effective learners, and receive support as they study and complete their homework. As a key program supporting Academic Success, Power Hour is designed to help all youth graduate on time, with a love of learning and a plan to succeed in today’s modern workforce.
A 2000 evaluation by Schinke et. al. found that when Power Hour is implemented with fidelity, and includes active learning and focused homework assistance, the program should positively impact student engagement and achievement.
Power Hour was intentionally designed to include the following elements and approaches that have been found through education research to be effective.
Integrating mentoring and social-emotional skill building. In a rigorous review and meta-analysis of after-school youth development programming, Hollister (2003) analyzed 10 programs; the small number was due to the study’s strict methodological standards. He concluded that mentoring and tutoring seemed to be effective components of afterschool programs, promoting in-school outcomes (e.g., attendance, test scores, grades, retention/drop-out prevention), learning, better behavioral adjustment and higher academic achievement. Programs that met the authors’ criteria for being evidence-based showed stronger impacts on school engagement, grades, test scores, self-esteem, pro-social behavior and non-use of drugs. The authors described evidence-based programs as consisting of sequenced skill-building activities, active learning techniques and activities, clear focus on the development of particular skills, and explicit goals to promote these skills. Power Hour is designed to support both academic and social-emotional skill building in each activity. Additionally, the program is structured to include community building, relationship building and mentoring.
Individualized support of math and reading skills. A meta-analytic study by Lauer and colleagues (2004) analyzed 53 out-of-school-time programs (after-school and summer) for low-achieving or at-risk K-12 students, focusing on those whose evaluations employed control or comparison groups. The authors found small positive impacts on achievement, especially the reading achievement of younger students (grades K-2) and the math achievement of older students (grades 9-12). The ways students were grouped for learning activities had an effect in reading. One-on-one tutoring generated the greatest impact on achievement. The duration and intensity of programs increased their effectiveness – to a point. Programs that lasted between 45 and 210 hours for the school year were associated with the largest gains. Other common program features associated with reading achievement were attendance, staff quality, and a well-defined curriculum. Remediation, tutoring or mentoring, and active learning were most closely related to achievement in mathematics.
Homework help. Cosden and associates’ (2001) review of the literature on after-school programs that focused specifically on homework assistance found promising outcomes among elementary and early middle school students. Many programs documented test score gains among participating students. Those that did not nevertheless realized related benefits, such as improved school engagement, academic confidence, study skills and protection against the “academic backsliding” that often occurs as at-risk youth progress through school.
Indeed, the findings of both Schinke and associates’ (2000) evaluation of Project Learn and Zaff and Redd’s (2001) review of the literature confirm the program outcome model on which Power Hour is based, suggesting the program is on the right track to promoting student outcomes like attendance, educational engagement, test scores and academic achievement. Furthermore, Power Hour sites that are able to offer consistent, high-quality tutoring to their participants can expect to demonstrate even larger impacts on student engagement and achievement.
All of BGCA’s Education programs, including Power Hour, are designed to build the academic and social-emotional skills that enable youth to reach the Education Core Program Area’s goal for them, which is to become effective, engaged learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future. In order to successfully learn and work, young people need to build not only academic skills, but social-emotional skills as well. Social-emotional skills help youth build healthy relationships with themselves and others, recognize and manage emotions, and solve problems. Power Hour specifically focuses on the following social-emotional skills: communication, collaboration, identifying and solving problems, planning and carrying out investigations, evaluating, perseverance and recognizing strengths.
Power Hour was designed to help youth achieve the following short-term, intermediate and long-term outcomes:
| Objectives | All youth will be effective, engaged learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future. |
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| Short-Term Outcomes (0 to 3 months) | Youth participate in active, skill-building learning and receive support and mentoring to complement and reinforce what they learn in school. |
| Intermediate Outcomes (3 to 6 months) | Youth both reinforce and remediate school concepts, and become more effective learners as they practice targeted academic and social-emotional skills. |
| Intermediate Outcomes (12 months or more) | School attendance, behavior and course progression demonstrate that youth are on track to graduate with a plan for the future. |
Programs in this Core Program Area complement and reinforce what youth learn during the school day, while creating experiences that invite them to fall in love with learning. Rooted in social-emotional development practices, programs in this area enable all youth to be effective, engaged learners who are on track to graduate with a plan for the future. As an informal learning space, Clubs have an opportunity to offer both remediation and enrichment, all while inviting youth to discover and pursue their passions through experiential learning. Targeted programs and High-Yield Activities in this area are linked to the Academic Success priority outcome area.
