High Quality Programs Encompass Intentionally Planned Activities

At the heart of every afterschool program are the experiences and activities that are intentionally designed to support the program’s goals for children and youth.

Briefly put, it’s how program participants spend their time. High quality programs ensure that time is productive and enriching. The program’s curriculum encompasses all of the intentionally planned activities in which children and youth can participate that have an intended objective related to participants’ well-being, development and/or learning.

The curriculum can have a wide variety of child/youth outcomes as goals, depending on the mission of the program and the population it serves. Regardless of intended outcomes, an excellent curriculum will be carefully designed, implemented and assessed to ensure that those outcomes are being attained. Programming is a broader term that goes beyond curricular activities to include aspects of daily experience in the program such as routines, expectations or schedules that combine to shape each child’s or youth’s whole experience while in the program. These program structures also must be intentionally designed to promote the program mission and goals for children/youth.

Best Practice Approach References:

• Wallace Foundation
• National Institute of Out of School Time
• Building Quality in Afterschool
• Afterschool Alliance

MyCom, in alignment with the State and National Trends also supports High Quality programs in the Greater Cleveland Community, more importantly, within the MyCom Network. To that end, for the 2024 - 2025 program year, MyCom is coordinating a quality-management process to evaluate the existing out of school time programs across our network to ensure our children and young adults participate in programs that are of the highest quality available in their neighborhood.