Staffing can be configured in many ways in an afterschool and expanded learning program. Although we have seen high-quality programs with a wide range of staffing models, we recommend a mixed staffing model that brings together highly qualified program staff members, vendors (e.g., outside providers who have expertise in content areas such as art, science, and sports), strong youth workers, and a program leader. Having staff members with diverse expertise promotes a learning community among the adults, reflects the assets in the community, and results in a richer program overall. Individual programs may choose to supplement these core staff members with volunteers and interns.

Each program looks for different qualifications for its staff members. Some programs weigh an academic degree and the amount of experience with young people most heavily in hiring decisions. Others look for personal characteristics (such as passion and commitment) and provide any additional training that an applicant needs. The balance among education, experience, and personality will depend on your program’s offerings, circumstances, and preferences. Potential staff member candidates include youth work professionals, community residents, content area experts (e.g., teaching artists, scientists, or chefs), former participants (program alumni), district paraprofessionals (e.g., reading assistants, computer aides, or teaching assistants), family members, district substitutes, senior citizens, staff members of community agencies, teachers (either current or retired), and college students.

After determining the hiring criteria, you should create a job description that lists the qualifications for the position, the duties and benefits of the position, and the expectations of the program. Writing a good job description will help your program attract the type of candidates you hope to hire. Use Tool 19: Job Description for Program Staff and Tool 20: Job Description for Program Leader to help define your program’s staffing.

To the extent possible, staff members and providers should be recruited from the community where the program is located. Staffing a program with local residents has many benefits, including knowledge of the community and relevant resources, connections and trust with families of the participants, and capacity building within the community. If yours is a school-based program, it may be tempting to simply hire from within the existing school staff because these staff members are already in the building and have been vetted by the district.

If your program decides to hire full-time school-day teachers, think about being flexible about scheduling. Often teachers are tired by 3:00 and feel overwhelmed by the thought of teaching for another one or two hours after school. Some programs deal with this by having teachers job-share positions either weekly or by session. You also may decide to ask teachers what they are passionate about. Rather than having teachers teach their school subject after school, ask them what else they enjoy. Maybe you have a mathematics teacher who also plays the violin or an English teacher who is a yoga instructor on the side. Find out their passions and invite them to run an activity doing that. They may be more willing to sign on if they feel they are getting a chance to teach young people something they really enjoy. Finally, you should use teachers strategically. You might want to hire subject matter experts (on a limited basis) as tutoring guides to other staff members or ensure that staff members are helping children in a pedagogically sound way.

Hiring school-day teachers can be a viable strategy and may provide you with several great candidates, but it is smart to recruit widely to ensure that you find individuals who are committed to working with young people in an afterschool and expanded learning program. Looking beyond the school walls will ensure that you are building a staff composed of people with varied expertise and perspectives.

To develop a well-rounded program, it may be beneficial to partner with community providers to offer some of your programs, particularly if partners have expertise or facilities from which your participants can benefit (e.g., a local arts organization, an environmental program, or a specialized sports provider such as a tennis instructor). These partners will need to be treated differently from other staff. All partnerships should operate under specific agreements, usually in the form of a memorandum of understanding or agreement. Work with these partners to establish clear wages, a weekly schedule with a set number of expected hours, clear policies about when they need to arrive and their role on the site (e.g., are they expected to arrive before snack time to monitor a group of youth during snack time?) and the professional development they are allowed or required to attend. Many programs also may choose to conduct regular meetings of all partners or have partners join the program’s advisory board. These practices are described in more detail in the section on partnerships and collaboration.

When recruiting program staff, ensure that you post the job widely in local media (e.g., newspapers and online job sites), in colleges of education, in the school or local site where the program will take place, on your website and Facebook page, in local public spaces, and in other places where young people spend time. Encourage all applicants to complete the Tool 21: Candidate Expertise Questionnaire. This will help program leaders narrow the pool of staff candidates and determine if potential candidates are a good fit. Use the questionnaire for both paid staff members and volunteers. The program leader should keep all the completed questionnaires on file—even after a position is filled—to refer to if positions open up in the future. From the pool of candidates selected based on their completed staff interest forms, the program leader should conduct in-person interviews with a team of at least two other people. Ideally, the interview team should include program leaders and lead partners who will collaborate with new staff members. If possible, other staff members can participate in the interview or submit interview questions that will help make sure new hires are a good fit for the program. It is advised to use the same set of interview questions for each candidate. Tool 22: Sample Interview Questions provides questions you can use during the interview process.

If time and your program structure permits, it also can be helpful to ask your top candidates to spend some time with youth—either conducting a short activity or, for middle or high school programs, being interviewed by youth in the program. Seeing how a candidate interacts with youth might help you make a final decision between two similar individuals. When the program leader and the interview team agree on a candidate, they should conduct a reference and background check and ensure a fair offer is promptly made to the preferred candidate.

Staff retention (including the retention of volunteer staff members) is crucial in afterschool and expanded learning programs. Research shows that consistency and continuity are important for both retaining youth participants and improving youth outcomes (Kauh, 2011). As with any other relationship, having a positive and ongoing connection with a program staff member is better for participants than having staff members come in and out of their lives.

Program leaders can promote staff retention in a variety of ways. Effective practices include providing staff members with detailed position descriptions so that they know exactly what they are being asked to do (see Tool 19: Job Description for Program Staff) and creating and adhering to consistent policies and procedures (read more here). You also should ensure that your program is providing equitable compensation, planning collaboratively with staff members, and working as a team to develop and implement programming (see the section on program delivery).

Program staff members are often asked to play a variety of roles—teacher, mentor, activity or game organizer, disciplinarian, counselor, and coach (as well as filing clerk, data entry person, receptionist, and so on). No academic degree or certificate program can prepare someone for all these roles. In addition, staff members often enter the afterschool and expanded learning field from a variety of different backgrounds. You may have teaching artists who are experts in their content area but haven’t spent a lot of time working with youth or youth workers who don’t have much content expertise. You might have teachers with formal education backgrounds, social workers, and recent college graduates—all of whom have different perspectives and expertise. Because of this mix of staff members and backgrounds, it is important to provide staff members with at least monthly professional development opportunities (see Tool 23: Professional Development Plan) and require that they actively participate.

Professional development is an umbrella name for the variety of learning opportunities staff members can engage in as a part of their jobs. These opportunities may include a staff orientation that presents information on program development, collaboration, and practices. Such orientations often take place at the beginning of the program year and include topics such as a code of conduct, mandated reporter training, policies and procedures, and behavior management. Staff also may participate in periodic booster sessions that are designed to reinforce the information presented to program staff members in the staff orientation and go into more detail on relevant topics. The program leader should include topics identified by staff members in weekly planning meetings where staff members can learn from each other. Topical training sessions are another option and include learning opportunities that specifically address a topic of interest, such as positive behavior management, or are related to a content area, such as integrating literacy into enrichment programs. With staff input, the program leader should determine the topical training sessions. Topics can range widely from the “basics” for newer staff members to “innovations” for more experienced staff members. These sessions can be facilitated on-site or off-site, and the facilitator may be a provider, a staff member, or an expert from outside the program. Finally, external professional development opportunities can take a variety of forms, such as taking a class at a local college or attending a local or national conference or workshop. Although these professional development opportunities often require more resources, they are important in allowing staff members to learn outside the local community. External professional development ultimately benefits both the participants and the program with new ideas and perspectives.

Professional development is an important part of supporting staff retention (and for providing a high-quality program). Choosing the right topics is important. Survey staff members using Tool 24: Staff Training Survey at least once per year to find out what they want to learn from their professional development experiences. Training topics you may want to consider include child and adolescent development, positive youth development, intentionality in activity planning, including youth in program planning, positive behavior management strategies, conflict resolution, creating a warm and welcoming program environment, health and wellness strategies, working with youth with special needs, social media as an activity tool, group work activities, data collection (e.g., training on your program’s attendance system), program evaluation 101, using data to improve programming, incorporating youth voice and choice into programming, and incorporating reflection into programming.

You also may want to consider whether an organizational authority (e.g., district or licensing agency) requires staff training or if specific staff skills would contribute to a safer and more supportive environment and an effective program. Determine if staff members (or other stakeholders) have requested training and decide if in-house expertise exists from that could be shared with other staff members. Finally, consider if external training is available, accessible, and known to be effective.

It is a good idea to train your staff in data-driven decision making. Using data to make decisions about program content, the type of services to offer youth, and how to best support your program participants can strengthen your program offerings and ensure you are addressing participants’ interests and meeting their needs. Bringing the staff together to learn how to do this can range from looking at your demographic and participation data during a staff meeting to hiring an expert in data-driven decision making to come in and lead an ongoing training series. What you choose will depend on available resources and time, but data-driven decision making is an important training topic to build into your professional development offerings. (See the sections on evaluation and program improvement for more information.)

When thinking about how to develop a strong menu of professional development offerings in the face of limited resources and staff time, it is important to think creatively and build on what already exists. Contact community colleges and local funders to find scholarships for staff members who want to take relevant classes. There may be untapped money available that the college or funder is having trouble advertising. Supplement financial reimbursement for classes with other incentives, such as greater autonomy in a job, increased chances for promotion, in-kind donations (e.g., offering donated computers for home use), and public recognition. (Note: For in-kind donations, make sure the program has permission from donors to use donations in this manner.) Rigorously focus limited resources on the highest priority development opportunities—those that appear essential to meeting the program’s goals. Take advantage of online training, which will reduce travel costs and may be more convenient for staff members with multiple jobs. Ask staff members to share (for modest reimbursement) their particular skills with other staff members at in-house training sessions. Be flexible when scheduling staff development time. Some staff members have other jobs or commitments, which may make it difficult to find a time for training that fits everyone’s schedules. Some programs work around this problem by holding training on the weekends or closing occasionally to provide training for staff members. Ensure that staff members are learning on the job by deliberately trying new strategies and working on developmental challenges. Partner with other programs or schools to share expenses for common trainings. Although such partnering will increase the size of the class, it may allow for double the opportunities. Join with other programs or schools to lobby providers of training (e.g., districts, nonprofit organizations, or universities) for more, different, or better quality training. Supply often follows demand, even in the public sphere—if the demand is organized and vocal—which also may reduce the cost of training per person. Have staff members evaluate each training opportunity and keep a record of these evaluations. This strategy will help other staff members know which ones to attend and which ones to avoid in the future. To optimize these opportunities, have staff members share with the group what they learned during professional development opportunities.

A great strategy for offering a variety of interesting professional development opportunities with limited resources is to have staff members or program providers with content area expertise deliver some of the professional development. Team leaders should refer to Tool 21: Candidate Expertise Questionnaire to identify staff members who may have experience with certain topics or may be great professional development facilitators.

As is true in any profession, program staff members should have the opportunity to reflect on their own practices and feel that opportunities to move forward in their careers exist. Reflective practices can happen informally in staff meetings, as a part of periodic one-to-one conversations with program leadership, and in more formal ways through a practice self-reflection tool or program observation that is part of a formal quality improvement process, such as the one described in the section on evaluation . Regardless of how it happens, the important part of the reflective practice is that staff members have the opportunity to identify their strengths and opportunities for improvement rather than being told how to improve. Use Tool 25: Developing as an Afterschool and Expanded Learning Professional and Tool 26: Self-Assessment of Effective Qualities to allow staff members to reflect on their strengths and identify areas of growth that will help them in their career and improve the overall success of the program.

As staff members are offered the opportunity to reflect on and share their practices, they will have the information they need to set professional goals. The program leader can support program staff members in achieving their professional or career goals by directing them toward relevant professional development opportunities and helping them see where they want to be in one year or five years. Afterschool and expanded learning programs are typically small and often do not offer many opportunities for promotion. Remember, however, that career progression means not only a promotion but also learning a new skill, becoming an expert at something, or being a leader or a trainer. The important thing is for all program staff members, including the program leader, to have a sense that they have a meaningful future in the program and are part of a team whose goal is to support participants' growth and development.

Retaining staff members requires an investment in personnel that demonstrates they are valued by the program. Clearly, wage or salary rates are an important part of that. Any new afterschool and expanded learning program will need to put some thought into how to create a fair and realistic wage structure. When planning a wage structure, make sure your wages for similar staff positions are consistent. Staff members will talk to each other, and staff members with similar qualifications should be paid comparable wages. You will likely have a combination of hourly personnel (e.g., those who are working part time) and salaried employees (e.g., the program director), so be sure to have clear written policies about each type of position, including rules for working overtime, who is eligible to receive benefits and how often employees can expect reviews and potential increases to their hourly or annual rates. Think about levels of expertise and qualifications for different wage levels - for example, you may have to pay teaching artists with particular content expertise a higher hourly wage than those staff members with less experience who you hire to hand out snacks, enter attendance, and focus on program logistics. If you hire school or district teachers, be aware of potential union rules on salary rates for staff doing additional work. If you are a community organization, you may be able to hire teaching staff through your own organization's structure. Unfortunately, even with very good planning, many programs cannot pay staff members what they feel the staff members deserve. Although it is important to try to offer enough money to attract and retain a qualified staff, other forms of investment can show the staff members that they are appreciated.

Invest in your staff. Set high expectations for staff members and treat them as professionals. Provide training for staff members to increase their marketable skills and provide consistent opportunities to prepare for the day's schedule and reflect on how the day went. Increase the autonomy and responsibility of staff members as they gain experience and publicly recognize staff members with newsletter articles, employee of the month awards, and banquets. Celebrate birthdays, holidays, the end of a program session, and other important dates. Provide creature comforts for use at the program site (e.g., coffeemakers, cell phones, carts for moving supplies of traveling instructors, and e-mail accounts). Finally, spend time asking for input, offering praise for a job well done, and simply listening.

Programs can decrease the gap between a modest pay increase and what an employee might hope for by offering intangible benefits. People will be more likely to stay in a job that doesn't pay them as much as they want if they feel what they do is worthwhile, if they can see a visible impact, and if they feel appreciated by their organization and the people they help. Be sure to share positive evaluation results and praise or anecdotes so that staff members can see the impact the program is having on young people. To gauge how your staff members are feeling about their jobs, use Tool 27: Staff Satisfaction Survey. Make sure you acknowledge the survey results with your staff members and make a concerted effort to implement improvements or suggestions.