PA Nonprofit Job Announcements

Temple NEST Assists Local Youth Center with Getting Funding for After School Programming

Temple NEST assisted the Lower Paxton Youth Center in receiving a grant award in the latest round of grant competitions for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers from the PA Department of Education. The project will receive $350,000 in the first year and $240,000 in each of two subsequent years to provide after school programming for students at Swatara Middle School, in Dauphin County. The Swatara Middle School is part of the Central Dauphin School District and serves students from the Steelton, Highspire, and Oberlin areas.

The after school project will provide academic, cultural, and recreational enrichment opportunities for the students. The academic programs will utilize alternative curriculum approaches to Pennsylvania´s State Aligned Standards (SAS). These approaches employ multisensory and socio-emotional learning strategies to help students master the reading, math, and science skills set forth in the SAS. For example, the “Moving With Math” curriculum teaches mathematical principles with interactive games, music, and other physical activities. Likewise, the “Project Read” curriculum utilizes story board, cartooning, and dramatic performance to teach literary skills. So, even the recreational components of the program contribute to learning objectives.

The Lower Paxton Youth Center has a track record in delivering after school drug and alcohol prevention, as well as life skills development. This new project expands their involvement with the school´s academic mission. Teachers do five things to promote the learning process: Instruct, Demonstrate, Scaffold, Participate, and Control. Time constraints often lead teachers to focus on only two: Instruct and Control, where Control refers to classroom management. Many students, however, need more of the interim components. They need more demonstration of learning principles. They need “scaffolds” or “learning hooks” to put lessons into a meaningful context. And, they need more opportunity to participate in the learning process. So, the after school program enriches their academic experience by supplementing the teachers´ efforts with these interim components.

The Temple NEST is co-designer and external evaluator of the project. Each year, students across the State take standardized tests to assess annual academic progress, the PSSA. In addition, schools utilize internal testing several times a year to adjust their lesson planning and measure interim progress, the 4Sight. The evaluation will look at these standardized measures as well as custom measures to determine what and how certain alternative curriculum approaches make a difference, or not. There are numerous intermediary variables that could offer the key to the ignition of the learning engine.

The Temple NEST (Nonprofit Evaluation Services & Training) is a enterprise center of Temple University Harrisburg. David Zanis, PhD is the Director of Temple NEST. Barry Nazar, DPA is Project Director for this and other projects of the Temple NEST. Courtney Hassinger is Executive Director of the Lower Paxton Youth Center. For information about the Lower Paxton Youth Center go to to www.lowerpaxtonyouthcenter.com