You’ve made it to the top of the mountain this year. Now as you prepare to offer in-person youth programming post-pandemic, don’t miss the opportunities to document what you’ve learned and prepare to initiate better programming.

Virtual learning and facilitation is not going away. Now is a good time to reset and recalibrate your efforts to take the long view. By making a few shifts, you’ll be able to lighten your load, better care for yourself and facilitate better learning for your participants.

2020 has been one of the most traumatic years during our lifetimes. And we know that the immediate and long-term effects on our children and youth could become dire—especially when the 2020 anxieties are coupled with already-existing trauma or challenges. When facilitating youth programming remotely, try these 5 trauma-informed practices to support your participants.

Facilitating good virtual meetings and workshops takes planning and practice. Here are the essential tips, tried and true structures, routines and techniques that make virtual meetings effective and engaging—in a BINGO board :)

In the long list of lessons the pandemic has taught us, one is: No matter how much you prepare, you may never actually be ready. And, even though we may have prepared, we still have to be able to abandon our plans and readjust to a completely different context at the drop of a hat. Our team is excited to announce the launch of our new virtual learning platform, LEARN>Without Limits.

As schools and programs embark on the varied Fall scenarios, I’ve fallen in step with other colleagues saying, “If we just had a little more information, we could at least make a plan.” In this post, we think about how navigating these unsettling times is like a dance.

Our hiring processes have to account for a number of different factors. Since many of us who have supervised OST programs received little or no training in effective staff recruitment, we wanted to share a few practices and principles that we’ve found to be effective for hiring staff who have the necessary skills and mindset for meeting the needs of the young people and families we serve.

Some organizations are going through another round of layoffs. People are on edge. No one feels like their best self right now. As a leader, how do you keep your team going? How do you buoy their spirits? How do you continue to navigate these rocky waters—remotely? Here are some ideas.

One way to mitigate the negative effects of too much screen time is to make sure our video meetings are both productive and efficient, allowing us to cut down on those long hours of screen time while still accomplishing the important work.

Life has changed so drastically for all of us in the past several months and has forced us to “set up shop” in our homes overnight!  Going virtual is the new order of the day and has challenged us to find resourceful ways to make the best of our circumstances. DWL team member Belinda Passafaro gives tips to maintain professionalism while working remotely.

Because our world, our selves and our work are intertwined, today’s post offers reflection on what anti-racism means to us as humans and how you can embed anti-racism into your work through your organization’s professional development strategy.

Think about when you wanted to learn how to dice a fresh mango, how to launch your e-marketing campaign or how to facilitate a Zoom meeting for the first time. All of these things were “nice to know”s until they became “must know”s. And THAT is when you sought to learn them. That’s what adult learners do—we learn things we need to know, when we need to. Help your learners get the knowledge they need by starting your own online university.