The Y4Y Insider - October 2022 |
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New Content on Y4Y
A Y4Y Care Package Just for You!
This care package acknowledges the stress you’re under as you work with students who’ve experienced trauma and other life challenges. It’s a gentle reminder that your own needs matter, too. Use the short video, podcasts, and downloads to process your feelings, identify your needs, develop a plan, and consider ways you and your colleagues can support each other.
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You may find it hard to justify taking time for yourself when so much of your role is dedicated to serving students. But the truth is, self-care isn’t selfish. For one thing, it’s nearly impossible to fill someone else’s cup when yours is empty. For another, you’re a role model, and modeling self-care encourages staff and students to give attention to their own physical, mental, social, and emotional needs. This month’s Insider puts those needs in the spotlight. Self-care matters because you matter!
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Self-Care Is Never Selfish — Don’t confuse self-care with self-indulgence! Taking care of yourself helps you be the best version of yourself. Recharge your personal battery with Y4Y’s newest Click & Go, Self-Care Matters. It can help everyone in your program improve their well-being, work together harmoniously, and effectively serve youth.
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Creating a Mental Health Tool Kit — From Halloween to horror movies, “October” and “scary” go hand-in-hand. When you guide students to create their own personalized mental health tool kit, they’ll discover ways to face their fears and manage stress. They can also harness the power of diet, exercise, and goal setting to improve their health and well-being.
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Building a Program Team — Including diverse stakeholders on your 21st CCLC program provides access to ideas, perspectives, expertise, and resources to help you reach your goals. Not sure how to build a strong team? Y4Y’s new Quality Program Quickstarter covers the basics in about an hour. When people with a purpose unite, energy goes up, stress levels go down, and the future looks brighter than ever!
- Y4Y's Voices From the Field guest, Jolene DiBrango, shares a grassroots effort in New York to build a teacher pipeline by helping students of all ages explore teaching as a career pathway.
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Revisit the 2022 Summer Symposium!
You can browse the offerings for a topic of interest, view recorded sessions, and download presentations and handouts from the Nita M. Lowey 21 st CCLC Summer Symposium anytime on the Y4Y portal. Check out sessions you missed or rewatch your favorite plenary moments. |
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Please note: A certificate of participation is available only to those who participate in the live events. Certificates will not be issued to those who view the recordings.
Check out these newly archived webinars:
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Gathering STEAM
Powering Your STEM/STEAM Initiatives
Vegetable Revival
When you treat yourself with kindness, kindness tends to reach other facets of your life as well — Mother Nature, for example. Lend her a hand by giving everyday food scraps a second life. This activity from the Exploratorium teaches students how!
Be Well!
This exercise from The Franklin Institute explores the effect that stress has on our bodies and includes activities that can lower stress. Help your students experience how something as simple as helping their bodies relax after a tense situation can improve well-being.
Exploring Physics
The NASA Heliophysics Education Activation Team (NASA HEAT), the American Association of Physics Teachers, and Temple University have teamed up to offer a free workshop series for educators: Physics in an Astronomy Context. Register and bring astronomy-aligned physics to the high school students in your program!
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Family Resources
The National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition has a new resource for English learners and their families: The English Learner Family Toolkit is available in Arabic, Chinese, English and Spanish to help families choose educational services that meet their child's needs. |
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Y4Y User Tip
Have you taken a Y4Y course and felt a burning desire to put your new skills and knowledge into practice? You're in luck. Each course features a Learn More Library with additional resources and creative ideas to help you build those intentional activities you learned about in the course. |
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State Coordinator's Corner
Supporting program leaders and staff as they help students recover academically and emotionally from disruptions to their education is likely near the top of your priority list. After all, it has been nearly three years since the pandemic drove out-of-school time (OST) programs to serve children and families in new ways. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says disruptions at home and at school disproportionately affected children from racial and minority groups — and OST programs rose to the challenge to partner with schools and support students. But many educators report feeling tired and stressed. In fact, the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development calls teaching “a profession on the brink” due to burnout and low morale. Program staff in your state are no doubt feeling the effects as well, even as they’re being asked to support students’ learning recovery. Here are two ready-to-share messages you can pass along to grantees in your state about relevant Y4Y resources created especially for them:
Post of the Month
Feel free to share the following post on your social media accounts:
Feeling burned out? Need some strategies for managing stress as you navigate the challenges of working with students who’ve experienced trauma and difficulties? Try You for Youth’s Self-Care Matters Click & Go.
Training of the Month
As 21st CCLC programs work with school-day staff to support students’ academic success and learning recovery, here’s a training module that can help program staff maximize their efforts:
Intentional Activity Design — Veteran staff and newbies alike will appreciate the practical guidance and downloadable tools in this Y4Y Program Quality Quickstarter module, available 24/7 at no cost on the U.S. Department of Education’s You for Youth site at y4y.ed.gov. It shows how to use the intentional activity design process to align 21st CCLC program activities with student needs and interests, program goals, and school-day learning. You can complete the module (and earn a Y4Y certificate of completion) in about an hour.
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Building a Pipeline to Education
Y4Y recently spoke with Jolene DiBrango, Executive Vice President of the New York State United Teachers, about the organization’s Take a Look at Teaching initiative. This grassroots movement aims to elevate the education profession and build a teacher pipeline that reaches all the way back to students in elementary school.
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Jolene DiBrango is the Executive Vice President for the New York State United Teachers. She also serves on the Board of Directors for both the American Federation of Teachers and the New York State AFL-CIO. |
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Nov. 8 is National STEM/STEAM Day – Show your students the many career opportunities in this expanding field. Check out this list of STEM career ideas and ask your students which ones they could see themselves pursuing!
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Nov. 23 is Fibonacci Day – Introduce the Fibonacci sequence to your students and see how many objects, plants, or structures mirror the famous Fibonacci Spiral.
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“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.” — Melody Beattie |
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Topical Tool Kit
Organizational Culture and Climate
This tool kit features Y4Y tools from various courses to help you examine and strengthen your program’s culture and climate to nourish, support, and retain staff and students.
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Download this zip file with eight tools from Y4Y’s new Quality Program Quickstarter module, designed to help you assemble a diverse chorus of voices to make your program sing.
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Disclaimer: This newsletter may contain links to information created and maintained by other public and private organizations. These links and pointers are provided for the user’s convenience. The U.S. Department of Education does not control or guarantee the accuracy, relevance, timeliness, or completeness of this outside information. Further, the inclusion of links or pointers to particular items is not intended to reflect their importance, nor is it intended to endorse any views expressed, donation solicitations or products or services offered, on these outside sites, nor any organizations sponsoring the sites, whether financially or by website hosting.
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