Staff are trained and the kids are back in school. The program has been running for a week or two now, and the summer planning you did to start the year is already beginning to take shape. Staff understand the expectations and implement the program activities with enthusiasm and fidelity to the why of what they are doing, making personal connections between the content and the daily lives of the children and youth in the program.
This is the ideal, what we all strive for as leaders in the out-of-school time field as staff return to another year of programming. This is what we orient staff for in the last weeks of August, how to make those connections and be a role model, an afterschool hero, the person that helps think through a math problem. But how do you know you’re on the right track? How do you know you’ve given staff the skills they need to be successful? Do staff understand their potential for opening doors of opportunity, peaking children’s interest, just by being engaged in the activity they are doing on any given day?
Start with the end in mind…what do you want May and June to look like? Do you want to showcase something they have been working on? Host a performance or family picnic. Are staff able to have a role, and more importantly are there any skills that could be embedded into programming. Perhaps something that scaffolds and builds upon earlier things covered during the program year. Do you have the capacity to train staff to develop a calendar of engaging activities? Time to coach and provide leadership and guidance? The job of an afterschool program leader is multi-faceted and can change on a regular basis depending on the conditions on the ground.
With the end in mind, are there any staff that you want to develop over the coming year? Emerging leaders that can shadow site leaders or program administrators. What can you delegate to free up your own time to lead staff? Attendance, snack ordering, billing, relationship building, among other things. Giving yourself time to be a program leader starts with creating a vision that arcs across the program year and gives staff and children agency in making it happen.
It’s easy to fall into these “banner 10” themes, its easy to plan with intention and the end in mind
- June – Summer/Beach
- September – Apple
- October – Pumpkins/Fall
- November – Turkey
- December – Holiday themes
- January – Snowflakes
- February – Hearts
- March – Clovers/NCAA Final 4
- April – Showers
- May – Flowers
- June – Summer/Beach