Tuesday, March 11, 2008
A Lesson from Providence, Rhode Island: Afterschool an Opportunity to Engage "Troubled Youth"
Sunday's edition of the Providence Journal featured an innovative approach to addressing in-school disciplinary issues of school students. Instead of keeping students afterschool in detention, they are kept afterschool to learn emotional and social skills as well as complete reading and writing assignments. They focus on support versus punishment in what they call afterschool engagement.
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2 comments:
Hi Deb, it is wonderful that there is an afterschool program out there that uses socio-emotional programming to address unhappy and hard to reach children and youth. Often, children are not allowed to go to their afterschool program on a given day when they act out in school that day. This RI program is turning this concept on its head and focuses on MORE engagement, more skill development, not less, i.e. a prohibition to attend.
Thanks for your post.
Penny Cuninggim
Hi Penny - I agree. Rhode Island, both in the state and in Providence are doing some really innovative things in the afterschool realm. I hope we can continue to feature best practices from other states and cities and focus on what works for youth instead of punishing them.
Cheers,
Deb
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