Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center's Red Oak After School Program
Boston Beyond interviews David Moy, Executive Director of Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center about their Red Oak After School Program.
What makes the Red Oak After School Program unique?
I think it would be hard to claim that our Red Oak After School Program is "unique." Rather, I think the program shares the characteristics of other good after school programs. We have a very committed staff with diverse, multilingual backgrounds, an active parent involvement/engagement component, support services for parents and families and a good mix of educational, enrichment and social development activities for the kids. We are actually located in the Quincy Elementary School in Boston's Chinatown, and our agency, the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, was established by community residents to help plan and develop the school. When the school opened in 1975, BCNC moved its offices into the building and began programming. Physically sharing the space with the school has helped foster a closer relationship, and allows our programs to enjoy a strong and active partnership with the Quincy School principal and staff. With the school, Red Oak works collaboratively to plan and implement family activity nights and parent workshops for both the school and after school communities. The Quincy School has been noted for its academic success and enrollment is in high demand. Likewise, the Red Oak After School program is also highly regarded by community families in search of after school services. We enjoy a very successful symbiotic relationship.
What are some of the challenges you've faced around staff development?
After school program staff are largely part time, which presents challenges for staff development as many staff often have other commitments, and come to work just before the program begins? Nevertheless, our agency has a history of hiring and developing committed individuals from the community. Staff development is necessary to provide these individuals with opportunities for growth, the skills to work effectively with children, and to ensure the quality of our programming. We are very explicit about our expectation that staff must participate in skills development and we back that expectation up by setting aside funds in our program budget to pay for training and staff time.
We also aggressively pursue collaborative and free training opportunities, which maximizes our budget expenditures as well as increase opportunities for our staff. Examples include utilizing the staff training resources of our different ongoing community partnerships with the Children's Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Tribal Rhythms, Cooperative Artists' Institute, WGBH-TV, Harvard University Homework Assistance Program ( HASI ), The Boston Literacy Coaching Initiative, Child Care Choices of Boston and the Boston Community Learning Center's Bridging the Gap series. Red Oak staff also participate in the Achieve Boston staff training voucher plan, and several staff currently attend low-cost college classes in education, taught in Cantonese at the Urban College of Boston. One staff person received a scholarship to pursue an MA degree in bilingual early childhood education from Lesley College and succeeded in getting her MA with a teaching certification.
Again, we have been very fortunate to attract and recruit very committed staff from within the community and elsewhere. Many of our staff, in fact, were former program participants who became interested in teaching and/or the human services field. A significant number have gone on to get degrees in education. Our agency is proud that many of the bilingual Chinese teachers in the Boston Public Schools have worked in our program at one time.
Do you have a "teachable moment" or a story you would like to share?
"Teachable moment" must be a euphemism for a "crisis moment!" Seriously, the teachable moments often come in the form of a crisis when we are forced to step back, look at a problem and try to figure out how to best handle it. One such moment came in 1991, when a parent wanted to enroll her child, who had a severe physical disability, in the program. We said, "No", because we did not think we could provide adequate staff coverage to ensure her child a safe and quality experience. We then received a call from the Mayor's Office on Disability advocating for this family. We were told that we should take the child in and work with the office to figure out how to serve the child, or risk being a test case for disability access. We chose the first route and sought what information, resources and support we can to serve that child and family. We succeeded, and moved to the forefront of after school programs working to "mainstream" kids of different abilities.
Since that first case, we have integrated ongoing staff training around disability issues. We have come to recognize that a significant percentage of children in our program have special needs, often undiagnosed. We have learned to work aggressively with parents to seek support from the public schools for CORE evaluations and Individual Learning Plans. In addition, we have gone a step further and created a family support program for the agency. Our Family Services program is run by a licensed clinical social worker who helps parents address family issues, including dealing with children with special needs. And since enrolling that first child in 1991, we have received recognition for our work with children and families with disabilities. But, the biggest reward is our contribution to breaking down the stigma that is often associated with disabilities by the many families in the Asian community.
This "teachable moment" proved to be a great moment both for the Red Oak program and for the agency as a whole.