After School Safety and Education for Teens (ASSETs)

High-school-age youth (14-18) are at a crossroads in their development. They are preparing for a transition to early adulthood. It is during these years that young people need to ensure that they are on track to graduate from high school, and are beginning to develop plans and the needed skills for the challenges of adult life. These may include accessing opportunities for higher education or moving directly into the workforce. 

After School Safety and Education for Teens (ASSETs) programs offer an important resource to address these issues. Effective ASSETs programs also offer academic supports to increase young people’s success in school. Indicators include increased school attendance and homework completion, improved socialization and problem-solving skills, study habits and motivation, as well as a lowered risk of dropping out and a higher rate of graduation.

Those designing after-school programs on high school campuses face a number of challenges. Partnership for Children and Youth was an early advocate for high school after-school programs, leading to state legislation that created California’s high school after-school initiative (ASSETs) – the first of its kind in the country.

Bay Area ASSETs Learning Lab 2010-2011

From the fall of 2007 through 2009, the Partnership sponsored technical assistance to Bay Area ASSETs grantees. Assistance was originally in the form of an open-door learning community. It featured a series of training workshops, site visits to established ASSETs programs, and professional exchange among program leaders.

Beginning in 2009-2010 the Partnership, in collaboration with Temescal Associates, launched an enhanced ASSETs training program, called the Bay Area ASSETs Learning Lab. The ASSETs Learning Lab provides intensive support to ASSETs site coordinators and their identified site stakeholders as they seek to expand and improve their programs and strengthen leadership skills. The 2010-2011 Learning Lab will build on the success of the Learning Lab’s first year in 2009-2010.  In addition to those sites returning from this year, 2010-2011 will include 6–8 new ASSETs sites.

Goals of the ASSETs Learning Lab

• Help a group of experienced ASSETs Site Coordinators and their selected site stakeholders strengthen their leadership skills and capacity to conduct ongoing program improvement;
• Engage a group of experienced ASSETs practitioners in moving a selected program practice area forward while exploring quality for their own programs and for the region; and
• Build a cohort of Bay Area ASSETs grantees that could represent the potential of high school afterschool programs and offer promising strategies and models to other programs.

Process

The Learning Lab provides participants with information, skills and a structure through which they can assess school, community and youth needs, develop strategies and activities, and implement their plans. A site coordinator from 2009-2010, for example, discovered that athletes’ low GPAs were preventing them from participating on school teams.  She worked with coaches to develop a tutoring component that targeted athletes and raised their GPA.  They were able to keep competing on their teams, and interestingly, became more intrinsically interested in academic success once they experienced the improvements.  The understanding is that ASSETs staff come to the Lab with strong knowledge of, and experience with, their young people and school community.  With guidance from experts and input from peers, these staff can translate their knowledge and experience into specific ideas and realistic plans. 

The program improvement planning process involves four phases.

Phase 1 | Assess
Participants examine data and input from school stakeholders about school, community, program and youth needs, and identify program and participant outcomes that they want to better address.  They use this information to identify a programming strand for improvement.

Phase 2 | Plan
The second phase of the process is to complete an improvement plan that encompasses what needs to be accomplished. Participants articulate the long-term, intermediate, and early outcomes they are seeking, which includes identifying partners, resources, and data to draw on for indication of success.  They present and get feedback about the plan from key leaders in the school community.

Phase 3 | Apply
The third phase is the implementation of early strategies and activities
toward achieving intermediate outcomes. Participants use their improvement plan as a guide and create an action plan to identify immediate next steps.

Phase 4 | Reflect
The final phase of the process is engaging in ongoing reflection to adjust plans during
implementation. Participants consider which outcomes they are or are not able to achieve, draw on data to validate improved outcomes, and reflect on challenges and learning they can share with others.

To support this process, Lab facilitators provide information about promising practices in the identified areas of improvement through experienced providers, research and expert advisors.  Possible content areas might include types of data and data collection methods, apprenticeship programs, credit recovery, management structures to engage school and after school staff, vocational classes and accreditation, and strategies for engaging meaningful youth participation.

Lab facilitators also focus on developing participants’ leadership skills as core requirements of building support in the school community and among other stakeholders for their program and its improvements.  A key learning from the 2009-2010 Learning Lab is the importance of institutionalizing program elements and improvements early in the process.  Because the turnover rate in after school positions is high, the commitment of school administrators, school staff and other after school staff is important to sustaining the improvements.  Specific leadership skills include presentation and communication skills, project planning and facilitation, staff management, forming partnerships, and promoting leadership in others.