No Idle Hours Making After-School Time Productive and Fun for Chicago Teenagers A report to the After School Project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation by Tony Proscio NO IDLE HOURS Making After-School Time Productive and Fun for Chicago Teenagers A report to the After School Project of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Tony Proscio Executive Summary NANAVERAGE DAY in two dozen neigh- But apart from the diversity of its curriculum, borhoods across Chicago, some 3,000 to the experience of its instructors, and the satisfac- O4,000 teenagers take part in a pioneering tion of its participants, what makes After School after-school program run by After School Matters, a Matters nationally significant is the size of its ambi- three-year-old nonprofit organization backed by the tion. Its goal is eventually to offer a rewarding city’s school, park, and library systems, and chaired after-school experience to at least half of the by Chicago’s First Lady, Maggie Daley. teenagers in the public school system — not neces- After School Matters offers paid “apprentice- sarily through its current programs alone, but in a ships” in technology, the arts, sports, and commu- widening circle of high-quality activities that take nications, in which high school students learn skills full advantage of the city’s resources and those of that can qualify them for summer or part-time Chicago community organizations. jobs. Instructors in the program are practitioners The fact that this goal seems achievable, in time, in their discipline, and the apprenticeships are run has a lot to do with the extraordinary interweaving as “master classes,” with direct coaching for small of the three city agencies that stand behind it: the groups of 20 students each. A related program, less Chicago Public Schools, the Park District, and the structured and unpaid, provides open recreation, Public Library. The three bureaucracies constitute a with adult supervision, for teens who are free to huge percentage of the city government workforce, drop in and out as they please, and whose only but with little history of cooperation with one responsibility is to have a good time. Participants another and even some longstanding rivalries. Yet in all these programs give them high marks, many within a year after the idea was first floated, the return for a repeat experience, and there is some three organizations were sharing facilities, coordi- evidence that the word is spreading from student nating staff functions, and contributing part of to student, semester to semester. their budgets to making After School Matters programs a reality. The bureaucratic artistry that quality at its pilot sites for the first few years. made this happen — which starts, necessarily, in Even with a now-established roster of activities, the top ranks of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s admin- each expansion means recruiting another cadre istration — is at least as remarkable a story as the of accomplished instructors, assembling the right design and growth of the program itself. facilities and equipment in each new neighbor- So is After School Matters’ commitment to hood, introducing students and parents to the pro- teenagers, a group that some conventional wisdom gram, and ensuring the cooperation and smooth dismisses as too old for after-school programs. interaction of all the participating agencies at What makes that belief wrong, says Mrs. Daley, is each new site. With each stage of expansion, that that most after-school programs are designed to process becomes a little easier, but it will remain suit younger children, not older ones — they don’t a challenge until After School Matters is operating offer the challenges, use the skills, or present the throughout the city. opportunities for leadership and employment that Given the difficulties ahead, this report is not a teenagers want. “That attitude,” she says, “assumes chronicle of proven success, at least not yet. It is, that teenagers are somehow already ‘lost.’…If though, the story of an impressive start, against teenagers are lost, it’s because we’re losing them.” long odds, on a project that very few cities have At the three-year mark, After School Matters is even begun to undertake. If it succeeds, it could still at an early stage of growth — with all pro- provide a model, or at least a practical working grams operating at one-quarter of the city’s high example, for other cities where teenagers have too schools and involving, at the time this is written, little to do with their out-of-school time, and the roughly 4 percent of the total citywide enrollment. resources to help them have yet to be mobilized. Although growth is now expected to accelerate, the program was careful to start slow, ensuring high June 2003 Gallery 37 Apprentice, Spring 2002. NO IDLE HOURS ■ 5 ATE ONATUESDAY AFTERNOON Whatever Horton Foote or Gregory It’s a good inventory of what many of in April, well past the end of the Peck might have thought of Jerone’s per- After School Matters’ 3,000 to 4,000 stu- L school day, a cast of Chicago formance, for the young actor the role dents would say in response to the same teenagers is rehearsing a courtroom scene is plainly something physical, urgent, question. According to a survey by the from To Kill a Mockingbird, playwright nearly volcanic. Chapin Hall Center for Children at the Horton Foote’s 1961 adaptation of the Afterward, a visitor asks what brought University of Chicago, most participants novel by Harper Lee. The stage is in Jerone to the ten-week theater academy, give some version of these basic explana- the auditorium of Paul Robeson High part of Chicago’s pioneering after-school tions for enrolling: School, on the city’s south side. All the arts program for teenagers, called Gallery actors are African Americans. Most of the 37. It’s the usual kind of well-meaning ■ They want to learn a new skill. characters they portray are white segrega- visitor’s question, intended to elicit the ■ They need money or a job (participants get a $15-a-day “stipend” in most tionists. The unconventional casting adds dreams of a talented youth, a star-struck programs, and the majority of the a layer of complexity — and maybe also movie or theater buff, or just someone programs prepare students for regular of meaning — to Lee’s tale of white soci- who likes to perform in front of friends. summer or part-time jobs). ety coming to terms with race in pre- (Some other students in the class do, ■ They enjoy the activity, whatever it may be. (After School Matters offers programs Civil Rights Alabama. in fact, confess an inner passion for in the visual and performing arts, tech- Something about the teenage actor the stage, though far from a majority.) nology, sports, and communications.) Jerone, playing the patrician lawyer Atti- Despite what seems like a flair for his ■ Or in some cases, like Jerone, they cus Finch, draws a visitor’s attention. It role, Jerone isn’t trying out for a remake joined because “a friend was in this.” isn’t Jerone’s technical performance — he of Fame. He has no plans for a life in the shows a command of the character and spotlight. He’s a sports enthusiast with The After School Matters academies are the surrounding tensions, though the dreams of medical school. not, in short, elite clubs for the gifted and courtroom language occasionally trips Instead, Jerone’s simple answer to the creative. For most students, they are first him up. What’s instantly striking is his visitor’s question “what brought you and foremost an alternative to “not doing physical intensity. here?” provides a clue to the remarkable anything else” — a chance to be among Jerone’s Finch isn’t just defending the depth and reach of Gallery 37 and its friends and adults working on something innocent Tom Robinson, or wryly sub- growing circle of affiliated after-school challenging that doesn’t necessarily involve verting a smug racist order, in the under- programs for teenagers, collectively called tests or grades. In some cases, a semester stated style of Gregory Peck in the 1962 After School Matters. with After School Matters also offers an film. Jerone leans and scowls, his gestures “A friend of mine was in this,” he says, alternative to a low-wage, low-skill job, sharp, athletic, and blunt, like a boxer’s. referring to the theater program. “And a and a way of getting more interesting At 5’9” and roughly 150 pounds, he teacher said I’d be good at it. I wasn’t work down the road. But even among doesn’t walk across the stage, he thrusts. doing anything else. So I signed up.” students who see the program as a path 6 ■ NO IDLE HOURS ‘We have tended to isolate teens — we’ve walled them off as a big mystery that we never hear about except when there’s trouble.…If teenagers are lost, it’s because we’re losing them.’ — Maggie Daley toward personal development or a better gram. Most people who support or operate focus on younger kids. And sure, we job, most say they mainly chose it because, youth development programs prefer to need to pay attention to younger stu- like Jerone, they consider it a fun place to start younger, when children’s habits are dents. But that attitude assumes that be with friends. still forming and their reliance on adults is teenagers are somehow already ‘lost’ — That response corresponds to a growing still mostly intact. Some experts on the that it’s too late to interest them in body of scholarship on what appeals to topic, usually speaking hypothetically and things, to get them involved in the com- adolescents and how young people organ- sometimes off-the-record, even speculate munity.