Are you new to the field of afterschool and expanded learning? Perhaps you want to make big or small changes to your existing program or need standardized forms for all your program sites to use. Or perhaps you are starting to think about program evaluation and just don’t know where to start. If any of this rings true, read on. Beyond the Bell: A Toolkit for Creating Effective Afterschool and Expanded Learning Programs is for you! This guide - available in both hardcopy and online - is meant for program leaders from both community-based and school-based programs as a resource to help you through all the challenges of starting and running a program. It works well both for those starting a brand-new program and those looking to improve an existing program. We start this Toolkit at the foundation: management practices that are critical to building high-quality programs. This latest version of the Beyond the Bell Toolkit is updated to reflect changes in research and in the field from practitioners like you. We hope it will be a resource you can return to many times as your program grows and changes to reflect youth participants, your community, and your own leadership.
Whether you are starting a new afterschool and expanded learning program or improving an existing one, it’s an exciting time as you begin to think about how to manage a high-quality program where young people will learn and have fun. This section will help you get off on the right foot. Although it may seem overwhelming right now, taking the time to think about your management structures, operating procedures, and program design is an essential part of creating an effective program. As you move through the sections of the guide, you will continually revisit this section after implementing new ideas and evaluating their success.
Bridging the space between program development and program implementation in the continuous improvement cycle involves understanding and capitalizing on partnerships and the delivery of your program. Your program does not operate in isolation but is connected to others through space, staffing and activities. The types of activities you offer, the manner in which the activities are presented, and the staff you hire and train to provide the activities will be the most defining component of your program. You have now moved into the program implementation phase of the continuous improvement cycle. This section covers a lot of material and will provide you with many ideas for your program. Some you will incorporate right away, but you may feel you aren’t ready for (or don’t want to) incorporate others. That is okay. This section is designed to give you a wide variety of tips, recommended practices, and activity ideas from which you can draw to create a program that highlights the resources in your community and the assets that your staff and participants bring to the program.
Evaluation is a critical component of the continuous improvement cycle because it provides programs with the information they need to answer important questions about their program —information that can be used as a basis for making program improvements. Evaluation is the tool that allows you to answer two crucial questions about your program: (1) What are we doing well? (2) What do we need to change to produce the desired outcomes for our community? This section will help you think about evaluation as a tool for guiding ongoing improvement. It will look at the evaluation decisions afterschool and expanded learning programs similar to your program will have to make, and it will help clarify the what, when, how, and who of basic program evaluation.
Now it’s time to reap the benefits of all your hard work by using your evaluation results to improve your program. Throughout this Toolkit, we discuss the value of developing a cycle of continuous improvement—of planning, doing, reflecting, and revising. Each section covers an important part of the cycle, including key steps in the process of building a high-quality afterschool and expanded learning program. Now with this section, we bring all the pieces together to focus on the last stage of the continuous improvement cycle—improving your program—before it starts again.