High Quality Staff.
High Quality Program
A high quality after school program needs to have a safe and supportive environment for students so that it meets their social-emotional and physical needs. This can promote pro-social behaviors with peers, better work habits, and stronger task persistence. Additionally, program design should have high expectations of their students and engage them with meaningful activities, allowing students to acquire new skills or develop mastery. The program should be school-alined to best serve the students.
My Strength
My strength is in my ability to work well with diverse students. I define this competency as the ability to be open-minded and adaptable to different situations and perspectives while learning and respecting each and every person whether they are an adult or child. This mindset allows me to create an environment of no judgments and I can model for students this which can teach them to respect and understand each other's differences. It also allows me to promote and teach the skill of conflict resolution to students to support their socio-emotional development and teach them effective communication.
Work in Progress
An area that I would need some support would be the ability to engage important adults in the participant's life. I define it as being able to communicate to the adults in the participant's life about the participant without overstepping boundaries. The reason I believe this is an area of growth for me because I feel that I can do better with communicating with the participant's adults and also keep them engaged with the program as well. Additionally, I struggle with relaying bad behavior to parents and can learn some new strategies to communicate effectively with parents whether it is about good things or bad things.
My Value
As an undergraduate student, I can bringing in fresh ideas for activities or offer a new perspective to certain things. We are also closer to the participant's age, we are may be more familiar with the interests of the participants. A good example is with technology. There are heavier reliance on technology in education and can be incorporated into after school programs effectively to improve digital proficiency which is an important skill to have for the future. We also know the latest trends and can find ways to creatively incorporate into the program to engage students with real-life applications of concepts they are learning so the next time a students "why do we need to learn this" there is a specific answer.
What I look for
I hope that my supervisor is someone that promotes the professional growth and development of the staff. I define this leadership skill as placing emphasis on recruiting staff that are willing to learn and also providing a system that supports professional growth such as a mentorship system or monthly professional workshops. I think if a supervisor emphasize growth, then a program is likely to be doing well because everyone within the program has a growth mindset. There will be a culture of communication and continuous progress. I look for programs that are willing to try and implement new things to improve the program because that is how we can continuously be doing our best to serve the community.