Beyond the Gap: Rethinking the Potential and Pedagogic Promise of After-School Community-Based Educational Spaces

• In Event: Reimagining After-School Community-Based Spaces as Places of Pedagogical Possibility, Hope, and Healing

Abstract

There is a dearth of scholarship examining the multiple dimensions of after school programs and the complexities of the political terrain youth workers navigate. This paper provides a deeper understanding of the role youth workers play in the lives of youth and the political tensions they surmount. The purpose of this paper is to reimagine after school spaces beyond centers of academic support charged with lessening the achievement gap, but also as spaces that nurture social, emotional, cultural, and political education and development. Through the voices of youth workers from an after school program serving Black youth, this paper examines their triumphs and challenges in the face of political and funding pressures to narrowly define after school spaces as homework help and test prep centers to close the achievement gap. This study is situated in theoretical approaches to education that suggest that schools are not the only purveyors of education, and that community-based entities have always been vital in contributing to the education and development of youth (Gordon & Bridglall, 2002; McLaughlin, 2000; Weaver, 1972).

With participant observation as the primary mode of collection for this ethnographic study, a total of thirteen months was spent in a college prep and youth development after school program. Participant observations occurred at large program events over the course of an academic year, including middle and high school retreats (2), staff retreats (2), parent orientation meetings (4), curriculum planning meetings (13), and staff development trainings (10). Every youth worker in the organization was interviewed (n=20) and observed during staff meetings and organizational events. All individual interviews were semi-structured in-depth and open-ended, lasting between 60 minutes and 150 minutes. A total of 3 focus groups, lasting between 60 minutes and 90 minutes were held with participants.

Findings from this study indicate that in an education climate that incentivizes test scores, youth workers find themselves experiencing many of the same constraints as classroom teachers in terms of pedagogical innovation and autonomy. Findings show that there are funding pressures to focus only on the academic components of the program, which disregards the social, emotional, political and cultural education occurring in the space. Further, the struggle for funding proved to be a huge obstacle for youth workers who advocated for programming beyond academics. They attributed the funding challenges to competition with charter schools and after school programs that describe youth in deficient ways to funders.

This paper has implications for youth workers and traditional classroom teachers as they wrestle with the effects of sanctions in educational policy. This paper also encourages after school program directors and policymakers to consider the importance of comprehensive approaches to after school programs. After school spaces and youth workers must be given the opportunity to fulfill the range of their pedagogical promise through innovative academic, social, cultural, and emotional development that engages youth in vital and meaningful ways.

Author

• Bianca J. Baldridge, University of Wisconsin - Madison