Kid Power

After school and summer leadership - Kid Power's after school programs operate for 3 hours/day monday-friday for 38 weeks. Students participate in the daily academic Power hour to receive homework help and academic enrichment support. Classes are taught but by Kid Power's site coordinators (with guidance from dcps contracted teachers) and supported by high school volunteers and college staff, utilizing small group instruction. Curriculum is aligned to the common core standards; however, Kid Power meets students where they are academically while working to gradually support these grade-level standards. Activities incorporate innovative and hands-on learning (i.e. Math taught through a fantasy baseball competition). Following the academic Power hour , students connect a stem-based curriculum to hands-on gardening, cooking, market, and service-learning operations in Kid Power's award winning veggietime project. During veggie time, students investigate sustainable agriculture, nutritional concepts, environmental science, and healthy living practices. Reading comprehension lessons are reinforced through hands-on science experiments and exploratory learning. Then, students apply these lessons to school-based gardens. They use produce in cooking and recipe development classes, bring produce home to participating families, and sell the remaining produce at farmers or school-based markets. Finally in our third program component the citizenship project, students connect a literacy-building and civic engagement curriculum to community action projects. Students work with high school or college tutors to complete a section of their "citizenship workbook," which teaches students us history and the building blocks of citizenship. Lessons are connected to hands-on activities that reinforce the democratic process and encourage civic participation. At the beginning of each year, students set up a Kid Power congress to create and pass bills pertaining to program operations. Students connect these lessons to service-learning and advocacy projects. In addition to these core programs, Kid Power also implements weekly enrichment opportunities based on youth interest and weekly stem activities. As an extension of our afterschool program, students engage in a daily full-day summer leadership academy for 5 weeks. In the morning, they participate in morning academic activities focused on ela, stem, and citizenship. In the afternoon, youth engage in enrichment activities based on our school-year programs with an emphasis on project based learning.

Mentors Inc. at Kid Power - mentors Inc. at Kid Power trains and matches community mentors to middle and high school students to support high school graduation rates and social-emotional growth. It follows national best practices that support enhanced youth outcomes; which includes career site visits, college tours, enrichment activities, and ongoing match support. Students receive five hours of face-to-face contact each month and weekly phone calls with their mentors, and consistent support from Kid Power program staff to document and encourage monthly progress.

High impact tutoring - this program combines the Power of social-emotional learning with critical evidenced-based academic support. Each week, students engage in 90 minutes of weekly high-impact tutoring in explicit research-based phonics instruction. Students work in small groups, with a staff-to-student ratio of no more than 1:3 on the ufli foundations intervention (aligned to dcps core reading goals). The program incorporates sel using a 5 minute mini-lesson to foster greater student engagement, a stronger connection to our program and staff, and build students' sense of self-efficacy. Tutors provide an sel skill activity, aligning with casel's framework for social-emotional learning (deep breathing activities for emotional regulation, icebreaker games for social awareness and relationship-building skills, and goal setting for responsible decision-making).