and reach thousands of daily visitors
6 JULY 2009
NO 1457
Activities
"Go out and play," and, "Have you done your homework yet?" were common expressions of parents to school-age children and youth in decades gone by. There were few formal out-of-school or afterschool programs as elementary school children came home after school to roam the neighborhood with their friends and teenagers arrived home after an afternoon of extracurricular activities or just hanging out at the local soda fountain. How that has changed!
Formal programs covering the time young people are not in school (only 20 percent of the time) have burgeoned rapidly in the past few decades as a result of profound societal changes. Although the need of all children for out-of-school-time programs has not been met,' millions of youngsters do participate in out-of-schooltime programs sponsored by a variety of agencies. There remain challenges to ensure quality in existing programs and those developed in the future.
A statement in a recent report, The Quality of School-Age Child Care in After School Settings (2007), provides a focal point for this American perspective: "Emerging research indicates that regular attendance in quality afterschool programs can yield a range of positive developmental outcomes for school-age children, but many afterschool programs struggle with understanding and improving the quality of their programs."1 Among attributes associated with quality out-of-school-time programs are safety, both physical and psychological; activities that are developmentally and educationally oriented, engaging, and challenging; the opportunity to form positive relationships with adults and peers; and "opportunities for autonomy and choice."
Relationships and activities
The developmental value of relationships and activities as separate
program entities is now widely recognized. Less understood is the
integral, intertwined relationship between activities and relationships.
An activity can provide the grounding for a relationship to develop,
with common interest and the adult support to the young person in
following this interest as the primary ingredient. An activity can
mediate the closeness of the relationship. Some youngsters, in the early
stages of a relationship, may be happier with a comfortable distance,
and a shared activity can allow this. Adults with strong competence in
an activity area may have much more appeal to a youngster than one
without. These adults find that they not only have more successful
relationships with the children and youth, but also that they have fewer
behavior management problems with them.
While today's out-of-school-time programs attempt to be sensitive to the diversity of the youngsters in the program, they may not be as aware of their role in another special culture: the culture of childhood. "Culture of childhood" refers to activities, games, traditions, rituals, and the like that provide youngsters social coin that helps them not only find common ground in which to relate to others but also enables them to learn more about other cultures." However, many children today, because of family dysfunction, limited exposure, or a similar other reason, may not have had an opportunity to be exposed to this culture. Thus, it devolves to the adults to be the transmitters of this lore, even though children themselves are the traditional channel for sharing this culture of childhood activities. The staff member who, for example, can show youngsters an effective paper airplane fold, how to spin a button on a string, or how to make a "fortune-teller" contributes greatly to their ability to form relationships with others.
KAREN VANDERVEN
Vanderven, K. (2007). From spontaneous play and hanging out to out-of-school-time programming: An American perspective. New Directions for Youth Development, winter. pp. 71-72 and p. 79.
NOTES
1. Little, P. (2007). The quality of school-age child care in afterschool settings. New York. Columbia University. p.2.
2. Little, P. (2007). p.3. Office of
Child Development (2006). Do afterschool programs work? Studies help
define key features. Pittsburgh, PA. University of Pittsburgh,
Office of Child Development.
