For our March issue, I want to preview a new course we have in development and share some insights on deeper student engagement.

We're always on the lookout for great new ideas that will help meet your programmatic goals and objectives while enriching kids. Right now we're exploring a relatively new area for us at the high school level. As kids and programs mature, this looks to be the new frontier for many after school organizations.

This level will be challenging because what worked in the lower grades won't necessarily play well for high school. In addition, with the heavy shortages in state funding expect more focus on academics and accountability.

Read about how we came up with this new approach to screenwriting, designed to really reach and involve older students. We'll be conducting a number of tests next fall to see how kids react to the new format. And if you need a good laugh, be sure to check out the examples of student films we'll be using. They're very entertaining!

Next we would like to extend an invitation to sites that could use refresher training via Webinar. This technology really fits the need for on-demand training and can save your teachers valuable start-up time.

And lastly, I stumbled on a great resource you can tap into to support financial literacy. A host of resources are available around personal finances from the makers of Quicken software. They've created a free personal finance site and educational game called Quest for Credit, designed for teachers and parents. It's entertaining and speaks to where many kids are today. So enjoy and as always if you have any questions or concerns please don't hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

Mike DeBritz mdebritz@CommLearning.com 1-877-347-0461

New slet ter -March 2011

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I N S I D E T H I S I S S U E :

We always have something new brewing here at Community Learning and this spring is no exception.

I like to get ideas from the field and hear directly from people that live after school everyday. Last November, I attended the California Afterschool Network's High School Summit conference and learned a great deal from site directors about their programming mix for high school. A relatively new arena filled with an entirely different set of challenges.

Many site leaders offered credit recovery and tutoring to help students on the academic side. There were also fun things you'd expect like jewelry design, video production or dance. On some levels, it didn't sound a whole lot different than elementary and middle school level programs.

I did a breakout on Being a Screenwriter because

we target students in grades 7-10. I got some very positive feedback on the topic of educating kids about how scripts are created, movie terminology and techniques for coming up with ideas. Some really good ideas came out of the conference, ideas around where high school kids are today, aligning to common core standards, student engagement and student directed learning.

After the conference, I really started thinking about the format of our Being a Screenwriter course and realized to ensure success for program leaders at the high school level, we would really need to rethink the design. We know from experience, how tricky running a class of any kind after school can be, even one as high interest as forensic science! With forensics, you have inquiry-based science that drives the learning with experimenting, data gathering, hands-on activities, evidence to examine and results to discuss. With screenwriting, your principal activity is writing and your final product is a five minute script.

The Latest The Cookie Jar Mystery has been updated with enhanced background information, teaching advice, new graphics, photos, student information, tighter integration to the Cookie Jar Case and more. If you want to upgrade, drop us a note and we'll get you on track for next year!

Continued →

THE LAB

The Lab — High School Screenwriting

Web-Based Training

Financial Literacy

With an emphasis on each student creating a story that's personal, there's going to be a strong effort needed from each student. In addition, your Instructor really needs to be interested or have some background teaching the topic. This presents a problem for high school after-school directors; how do you balance the desire to offer something interesting and unique like screenwriting without a big pool of teachers to recruit from?

So the answer, after hearing at the conference why student centered, relevant and engaging learning activities are so critical at this level, was to put the high school kids in the position where they own a large part of the process. If we empower kids with a creative license where they can exercise freedom and pursue some of their own ideas, we might be on to something. This involves moving the teacher more to that of a facilitator and getting kids buying into the idea that their participation is critical in making their script a success. If it all works, this can be a fantastic opportunity for high school students!

As we moved to the planning stage, I

remembered hearing from a site that offered Screenwriter in the past that using Hollywood movies is fine for examples but kids can't really see themselves being successful writing a Hollywood movie their first time out.

Around the same time, I saw an article in my paper about a youth film festival where a number of local kids were finalists. The organization conducting the contest was called "Reel Teens" based in Woodstock, NY...yes that Woodstock. I got in touch with the founder Barry Kerr and inquired about the possibility of using some of his student films in a course we had in development.

He was very gracious and explained he got started with the film festival to get kids interested in school and pass on what he had learned in his second career as a filmmaker. He's held a number of workshops and teacher trainings in his immediate area, to jump start young film makers and get entrants to his annual film festival. The program was in its 11th year and had close to 500 entries last year from as far as Japan.

We subsequently met and he said he'll be happy to provide past winners for our course. We even kicked around a couple of ideas about a possible course called "Being a Director." The student work he provided has

some really interesting stories, fun dialogue and overall was very impressive!

As the design came together in early January, we were successful in making it look very different than what we've done in The Missing Money Mystery or The Cookie Jar Mystery. Students participate in all phases of the class by starting off with a mini lecture, viewing a student film, critiquing the film, spending time brainstorming and then working on their unique script idea. A key component of the design is that students are engaged in all phases of the class... watching movies, discussing likes and dislikes and writing in each session.

Since this is a new arena for us, we really want to test this new format and role for the teacher, so I'll be out looking for Beta sites for next fall. There will be a couple of criteria, like mandatory training, adhering to the design and completing formal evaluations from both teacher and students.

Stay tuned, we'll have more details next month. In the meantime, if you'd like to look at some very entertaining student-produced short films, take a look at the past winners on Reel Teen's website at www.reelteens.org.

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FI NA N C I A L LI T E R A C Y

New slet ter -March 2011

Web-Based Training It's interesting how technology evolves and as we learn about it, how many more uses we begin to see. I remember participating in my first web-based class way back in 1996. The software had some neat features where you could raise your hand for questions, chat with other classmates and listen on a conference call run by the instructor. I think the topic was something on Local Area Networking.

So much of that breakthrough technology is freely available through your web browser today on sites like Google Docs and WebEx. We've done a couple of "Go to Meetings" lately and it went well.

We plan to use it more and currently have a couple planned for The Missing Money Mystery and Playing with Percussion, when the site personnel are in place. The technology really is a perfect fit because the sites are very rural, only meet as a group once or twice a year and not everyone needs to be trained.

Linda Johnson is heading up the effort and is very excited to get as many people involved as possible. If you have a new teacher that could benefit from a quick online overview and orientation, please don't hesitate to give Linda a call at 1-877-347-0461, extension 3.

I know from traveling in after-school circles, trades shows and conferences over the last 8 years that many sites would love to offer some type of financial education component. It's so relevant today with the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and the Bernie Madoff scandal still in the news. I'm sure a number of parents would appreciate a clear overview and break down of a "Ponzi" scheme to help them steer clear. But where do you start?

Elementary kids work on learning about money in math in as early as 2nd grade. But learning techniques on how to manage money is a true lifetime skill and not simple to teach. This sounds like a golden opportunity for knocking off that parental involvement component right? You might be thinking sure but the details are always in the implementation.

Well, enter Mint.com, a free website that aggregates all your banking account activity, investments, loans and bills to give you an accurate snapshot of your personal cash flow, if you will. It was created by INTUIT, the company behind

the personal checkbook software Quicken and the business software QuickBooks. It's a nice site with access via your smart phone and many neat features like auto-categorization of expenses.

At the end of last year, Mint.com announced a joint effort with Scholastic to launch a financial educational initiative aimed at middle school kids and their parents. They developed a fun online computer game and lesson plans for both parents and teachers. Take a look at their site and this introductory video, Quest for Credit at www.scholastic.com/mint/.

These activities and resources could help you jump start a fun mini-course on financial literacy. Students could watch the video, work on the activities and sign up for the software with their parents. Kids can use the site to bank their allowance and manage bank statements online demonstrating their 21st century skills. And the good news for your program's bottom line---this educational program is free!

Until next month...

T H E L A B C O N T I N U E D