Developing Globally Competitive Graduates
These programs are designed to ensure that all Club members graduate from high school on time, ready for a post-secondary education and a 21st-century career.
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Expect to Graduate High School
Project Learn reinforces the academic enrichment and school engagement of young people during the time they spend at the Club. Students do much better in school when they spend their non-school hours engaged in fun, but academically beneficial, activities. Through Project Learn, Club staff use all the areas and programs in the Club to create opportunities for these high-yield learning activities, including leisure reading, writing activities, discussions with knowledgeable adults, helping others, homework help, tutoring and games that develop young people’s cognitive skills. Project Learn also emphasizes parent involvement as well as collaboration between Club and school professionals.
Power Hour materials provide practical tips and best practices for recognition and incentives, behavior management, volunteer recruitment and training, collaboration with other organizations and use of technology and the Internet.
CareerLaunch encourages Club members ages 13 to 18 to assess their skills and interests, explore careers, make sound educational decisions and prepare to join our nation’s work force. Club staff or volunteers help teens build their job-search skills and job readiness by using the CareerLaunch Facilitator Guide and working with teens individually or in small groups. The CareerLaunch page provides Club teens, staff and volunteers with online career exploration, college and job search information and interactive activities. Mentoring, job shadowing and training opportunities round out the program.
Summer Brain Gain is comprised of one-week modules with fun, themed activities for elementary school, middle school and high school students that are aligned with common core anchor standards. Supported by Disney, each module takes a project-based learning approach: youth engage in a process of learning through discovery, creative expression, group work and a final project or production. As a result, kids develop higher-order thinking skills through the Summer Brain Gain modules while staying on track for the coming school year.
Money Matters promotes financial responsibility and independence among Club members ages 13 to 18. Young adults in the U.S. today are facing a perfect storm of personal and social pressures that can compromise their financial well-being: record lows in savings, record highs in student and consumer debt, increasing living costs and uncertain employment prospects. Money Matters helps young people learn financial literacy, so they can make good financial choices as adults. Participants learn how to manage a checking account, create a budget, save and invest, start small businesses and pay for college. Teens who complete Money Matters show improved financial management skills, including saving money and sticking to a budget.