GSE joins All Stars Project to Advance Field of Developmental Afterschool Programs

GSE joins All Stars Project to Advance Field of Developmental Afterschool Programs 

Rutgers Graduate School of Education (GSE) is partnering with the All Stars Project Inc. to enhance research and initiatives dedicated to afterschool programing.  For the past 30 years, All Stars has opened afterschool developmental programs for youth living in urban areas across the country.  Now, with the help of the GSE, All Stars will work to establish a professional field of developmental afterschool and promote research in that field as a cornerstone of a new innovative approach to addressing poverty and youth development issues in urban communities throughout the United States. 

 

As part of a $9.2 million expansion the All Stars’ will shortly complete construction on The New Jersey All Stars Center for Afterschool Development in downtown Newark, NJ.  The center will support inner-city youth and adults to come together for activities, which will help them with priority developmental issues like becoming more worldly and cosmopolitan. The center will be the first of its kind in the country.

 

The program’s partnership with Rutgers GSE will become one of many as All Stars strives to build a network of academic institutions working to develop education professionals and research that expands the knowledge of out of school experiences and its impact on learning, especially for urban youth. 

 

As part of the partnership, GSE’s Dr. Carrie Lobman – an expert on learning through play who has worked with All Stars since 1989 – will lead a graduate-level course at the GSE titled “Play, Performance, and Pretending: Innovations in Outside of School Programs” this spring. Throughout the semester, Dr. Lobman and her students will examine the role play and performance have in development and learning and what that looks like in children and youth’s outside-of-school experiences. The class will entail a service-learning component that will take place at the brand new Center for Afterschool Development in Newark, NJ. 

 

“Poverty robs children of play in addition to many other things,” said Dr. Lobman.  “And play is integral to human development. The All Stars’ approach makes use of young people’s capacity and love of playing, performing and pretending to make their worlds larger and help them see and create possibilities.” 

 

All Stars currently offers two performance-based programs, The All Stars Talent Show Network, in which participants ages 5 to 25 produce and perform in neighborhood hip hop talent shows, and the Development School for Youth, which is a leadership and business-training program that provides youth 16 to 21 with educational, social and internship experience. All Stars invites senior executives from leading corporations and law firms to lead weekly workshops with the students to learn the performance of business.  Upon graduation from the program, students are placed in a paid internship where they gain invaluable life and professional job experiences.

 

To learn more about the New Jersey All Stars programs please visit their website at www.allstars.org/new-jersey.