The Fifth Dimension: An After-School Program Built on Diversity

Chapter 1

Chapter 1 Introduction or the past decade, a group of college professors and their students have been gathering several days a week with elementary school children at various after-school centers to take part in an unusual educational experience. They play games and puzzle over homework problems . They write to each other and to whimsical characters that live in the Internet, and they chat about what it is like at college and what they think about the latest Harry Potter movie. The official reason the college professors are engaged in these pursuits is to provide undergraduates with a rich practicum course related to their course of study and to conduct research on developing successful after-school programs for school-age children . The college students are on hand to learn how to apply the lessons from their lecture courses to the lives of real children whose well-being during these sessions is in their hands. The children are there to have fun. This program has been implemented by universities in a variety of communities not only across the United States but also in other countries. We call the activity carried out in the community the Fifth Dimension, and the overall system of university-community collaboration to create after-school activities for children the UC Links Project. It is our belief that the Fifth Dimension –UC Links Project is now a proven success in reaching its most basic goal: to provide a workable model of after-school activities that advance the academic achievement—and particularly the literacy abilities—of elementary school children while providing college students with sorely needed practicum experiences to supplement their lecture classes. We also believe that our strategy for implementing, evaluating, and sustaining this project contains important lessons for educators, researchers, and policymakers interested in the development of after-school activities for children. And perhaps our experience with this program will be generally helpful to all those concerned with promoting the education and welfare of children as they face the challenges of a newly “globalized” economy. We believe that our work has implications for realizing the potential (but by no means automatic) efficacy of new information technologies in proF moting children’s learning and development. The use of such technologies in university-community collaborations may also contribute, we believe, to improving higher education. Finally, our research addresses the difficult problem of finding ways to sustain successful educational innovations. AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMMING FOR CHILDREN—AN OLD IDEA In the 1980s, when the current line of research was initiated, only a small proportion of school-age children attended institutionalized after-school programs; national attention was focused on the absence of supervision for “latchkey” children who were left alone at home or in the care of a sibling under the age of thirteen while parents were at work. Although there was little actual research on the consequences for children of spending time alone at home after school, the general sentiment in magazine and newspaper articles was that such an arrangement put children at risk. Subsequent research has suggested that children left alone or with older siblings are not necessarily harmed by the experience in any measurable way (Padilla and Landreth 1989). Nevertheless, the popular press still casts a skeptical eye on the practice of leaving children at home after school, even as parents continue to do so. Today about one-third of all school-age children, an estimated five million between ages five and thirteen , are latchkey children. What has changed is the importance attached to after-school programs. THE NEW CLIMATE FOR AFTER-SCHOOL EDUCATION As Robert Halpern (2003) makes clear in his comprehensive review of after -school programs dating from the late nineteenth century, implementers have drawn on a wide variety of social concerns and ideological commitments to justify their advocacy of adults and children participating in organized after-school settings. The earliest beginnings of the afterschool care movement are nicely captured by one of the many origin stories to be found on the Web pages of various boys and girls club organizations, of which the following is representative: The origins of Boys and Girls Clubs are traced back to 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut . Three compassionate ladies invited a group of street boys into their home for tea or coffee and cake. The positive behavior and obvious appreciation of the boys completely surprised the ladies, so they extended their hospitality several more times with the same supportive response from the THE FIFTH DIMENSION 2 [18.118...