Outfitted with all kinds of STEM-rich materials, games, tools, pop-up tables and awning, BSB’s Think Make Create (TMC) Labs ® are 7-by-12-foot mobile makerspaces that become instant platforms for hands on learning for kids attending afterschool and summer programs.
On February 10-11, Beyond School Bells hosted a meeting of 30 afterschool and summer program professionals from across Nebraska to discuss emerging trends and opportunities in our field. This annual meeting once again provided opportunities for Nebraska’s ELO leaders to come together and learn from one another and meet with their elected representatives at an informal breakfast event.
Prevention begins with connection. In place of problems, community leaders start solving issues by stopping them. Kids and youth need to feel connected to each other, their community, and their passions to stay out of trouble and remain motivated. And…
Jeff Cole of Nebraska Children and the Beyond School Bells collaboration were recently selected as the first recipient of the Ron Raikes Innovation for Opportunity Award. The award was given at a statewide ARKSARBEN recognition event at the Museum of Nebraska Art in Kearney on…
Collective For Youth, an organization based in Omaha, is doing an outstanding job working with the Omaha Public School district to bring high-quality Expanded Learning Opportunities (afterschool and summer programming) to 29 schools. Students receive healthy meals, strategic individualized tutoring,…
The Communities Together Can program in Columbus was developed to serve the high number of working families in the central Nebraska community. At first, the primary need it served was child care – a safe, structured and supervised place for…
In The Afterschool Alliance’s 2014 America After 3PM report, Nebraska came in #8, handily outperforming 42 other states in the Expanded Learning Opportunities we offer our students once the bell rings. Here’s a visual breakdown of why Nebraska performs so…
In Nebraska, 76.7% of families have all available parents working, according to the American Community Survey. With every adult on call to make ends meet, out-of-school care is a major challenge in Nebraska. In fact, it’s the reason many community-based…
We talked in a recent post about how violent juvenile crime spikes at 3 pm. Other high-risk behaviors among tweens and teens flourish in the afterschool hours and summer months as well. We’ve also already talked about how Expanded Learning Opportunities…
Growing the Good Life 