21st CCLC Resources

Search helpful and pertinent resources for enrichment programming.

• Adobe Youth Voices — Adobe Youth Voices Essentials provides free curricula and tools for educators to inspire young people to create digital media on issues they care about. Based on the best practices of educators from around the world, the curricula promotes youth expression, creativity, and engagement, helping young people build critical 21st century technology and life skills.

• Afterschool Alliance — The Afterschool Alliance is a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness of the importance of out of school time school programs and advocating for quality and affordable programs for all children.

• Beyond the Chalkboard — Created by the Boston Children's Museum, Beyond the Chalkboard is a free, online multidisciplinary curriculum created specifically for afterschool teachers. This curriculum offers hundreds of high-quality, engaging activities that were created over years of work with afterschool programs across the country.

• Doing What Works — Doing What Works is an initiative of the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences (IES), the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) was created in 2002 to be a central and trusted source of scientific evidence for what works in education.

• Edutopia — Published by The George Lucas Educational Foundation, Edutopia is dedicated to transforming the learning process by helping educators implement six core learning strategies. These strategies — and the educators who implement them — are empowering students to think critically, access and analyze information, creatively problem solve, work collaboratively, and communicate with clarity and impact.

• Every Hour Counts — Expanding Learning, Expanding Opportunity- Promotes Building of Expanded Learning Systems

• Forum for Youth Investment — Informed by rigorous research and practical experience, the Forum forges innovative ideas, strategies and partners to strengthen solutions for young people and those who care about them.

• Mizzen by Mott — inspires, engages and sparks learning in young people. With activities from premier organizations like Jazz at Lincoln Center and powerful management tools, this new app can help you strengthen your afterschool program. Supported by the Mott Foundation, Mizzen is available at no cost to afterschool professionals.

• NASA for Educators — Browse this alphabetical list for items of interest to educators. Locate top level sites for interesting topics, education pages for NASA missions, print materials, and other hard-to-find pages that offer resources for educators.

• National Park Foundation's Electronic Field Trips — Electronic Field Trips (EFT) give students the opportunity to learn about a particular topic through national parks they may never get a chance to visit. Each EFT consists of two components:
  
  1. A televised broadcast from a national park featuring National Park Service Rangers and youth hosts
  2. A website featuring downloadable lesson plans for teachers and interactive games for students. The broadcast and the website complement each other and teach with rich imagery and content in three different modalities.
  
  

• PBS Kids Plum Landing — Take your kids on fantastic adventures to explore our world with PLUM LANDING, an exciting environmental science project from WGBH Boston that helps kids develop a love for, and connection to, this amazing and beautiful planet we call home. PLUM LANDING offers children ages six to nine and their families a collection of fun and engaging games, apps, videos and hands-on activities, to do online as well as outdoors.

• The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) — CASEL is a not-for-profit organization that works to advance the science and evidence-based practice of social and emotional learning.

• The Massachusetts Afterschool Partnership (MAP) — MAP is a statewide partnership dedicated to improving quality and resources for afterschool, summer and youth programs across the state.

• You for Youth! — The U.S. Department of Education's 21^st CCLC office developed this entire website based on what the field was saying they needed to create engaging afterschool programs. The site will help you connect and share resources with your colleagues, provide professional development and technical assistance opportunities, and offer tools for improving your program practices.

• YouthLearn — YouthLearn is an initiative that offers youth development professionals and educator's comprehensive services and resources for using media and technology tools to create exciting learning environments.

Last Updated: November 8, 2021