to ensure that youth are empowered to have agency over their lives and their futures.” — RACHEL SCHUTZ vice president of club services, Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland (Ore.) Metropolitan Area
64 BACK TO SCHOOL | 2020
What’s Essential? In her role, Brown oversees the strategic direction for program training and development. She describes essential skills as those “that allow young people to show up in the world.” Through games, interactions with others and the design of each club’s physical environment, youth learn to build relationships, solve problems, control their impulses, gain confidence and work together. BGCA thinks about development holistically and tailors programs to specific age groups. “What you would do with children ages 6 to 9 isn’t what you would do with teenagers,” Brown says.
Nzingha joined the club when she was 9. “My mom was looking for a place to put me and my sister after school that would be safe and productive,” she says. Over the years, she participated in events such as cleaning up around the community. “We had to be at the bus on time. I learned about being punctual and if you’re going to be late, to call. You have to be accountable.” Essential skills are considered when implementing each of the BGCA’s’ numerous programs. Take impulse control, for example. With teenagers, Brown says, club volunteers and staffers may weave that skill into the financial literacy program. “If you give a teen $20, they will likely go off and buy something. But in our financial literacy classes we talk about saving, money management and deferred gratification,” she says. For younger children, BGCA has a program called Smart Moves, in which, Brown says, groups might play a game where children sit in a circle and the facilitator acts as if they’re going to pass a ball to one particular child but then passes it to someone else. “It helps the child learn self-management by being able to control how they feel at that moment,” she says.
Keeping Up Engagement The Chattahoochee Valley club serves 750 children every day, ages 6 to 18. The club facilitates 176 activities per year, per age group, says Reaves, who has a background in mental health and youth development. For kids in kindergarten through eighth grade, the clubs use
a curriculum called Second Step, and with teens they use Ready, Set, Action. Reaves tells the story of a teenager who came to the club in 2018 when she was 16, four years after her father died. “Her attitude was disruptive at home and at the club. She would really explode. She couldn’t even articulate why she was so angry,” Reaves says. The staff got the teen into a social and emotional program in which she could discuss feelings and relationships with her peers. “That was step one for her, and it kept her engaged in the club,” Reaves says. Step two included more intensive services, including meetings with a licensed clinical social worker. Then she went through the Ready, Set, Action program and worked on her emotional management, empathy and teamwork. After that program, she participated in the Keystone leadership program that focuses on community service and mentoring younger members. The girl became vice president of that group. “Throughout her journey, we talked a lot about her responsibility to manage her emotions, take initiative and problem solve on her own. That’s really what essential skills are; if we had done those things for her, she would not have developed those skills on her own,” Reaves says. “She became a better student, daughter, friend, club leader.” This year, the teen was a finalist in the club’s Youth of the Year program, which helped her earn a college scholarship. She plans to attend a state university in Georgia. >
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Teaching those skills can be daunting for parents and educators, so the BGCA’s 4,300 clubs throughout the U.S. can supplement their efforts. The organization, one of the oldest and largest after-school programs in the country, has seen success in working with young people to develop skills in six core areas: emotion management, empathy, teamwork, responsibility, initiative and problem-solving. Volunteers and staff members see firsthand how a child’s negative behaviors affect their health, their families and the wider community. To help students learn and incorporate these skills into their lives, “We get our young people involved in planning and opportunities to change their behaviors. We do things with them and not for them,” says Kimberly Reaves, vice president of operations at the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Chattahoochee Valley in Columbus, Ga.