BAH, Not Blah, for Brody After School Program
The Brody After Hours program provides students with extra time and instruction in a variety of arts.
The acronym is BAH but nothing could be more misleading when it comes to Brody After Hours.
BAH is the Brody branch of 21st Century Community Learning Center afterschool enrichment that will launch another six-week batch of programming next Monday. So on Wednesday morning 7th graders at the school signed up for an hour of samples from a menu consisting of the following choices:
- Musical Theater
- Culinary Arts
- Jazz
- Strategy Games
- Painting
- World Arts
BAH meets four days per week until 4:30 (Wednesdays are excepted due to early dismissals for teacher professional development). According to Brody site coordinator Judy Pauley, who also teaches language arts, Brody consistently enrolls more than 100 students for each unit of BAH.
“This one that starts next week will run up until spring break,” she said. “Then there will be one more during the school year and another 21CCLC unit during the summer. We have something for everybody.”
The bonus electives are “taught” by a mix of building staff and community partners like After School Arts Programming. Besides a more relatable acronym, ASAP brings a lot of hands-on activities into the mix that let kids move and get noisy, which students are anxious to do by the end of the school day, while raising their consciousness and piquing their curiosities at the same time.
“Brody is in the 5th year of their five-year grant and during that time over 700 students have participated in 21CCLC program opportunities there,” said Heidi Brown, the district’s 21CCLC Coordinator. “We’ve seen afterschool participation more than double since the first year of the grant at Brody, due in large part to the exciting programming that is offered there. Judy Pauley has done an amazing job at Brody, bringing community programs into the building. She’s also encouraged teachers to leverage their passions into afterschool programs that engage students: chess club, jazz band, guitar lessons, dystopian novels club, movie-making, cartooning, culinary arts…and when Judy had a student come to her with an idea for a club based on a popular video game she encouraged the student to create and lead the program herself. It became one of the most popular clubs we’ve seen.”
Afterschool programs like BAH essentially extend learning without making students feel like they’re still in class. And it’s free of charge! Late buses also run to transport participants.
At one of Wednesday’s sample sessions Penny and Lee Furgerson from the Gateway Dance Theatre demonstrated some African drumming and interpretive dance that looked and sounded like they resonated with the 7th graders gathered on the auditorium stage.
There was plenty of “Hah”! But no sign of “Bah”!
