Out-of-School-Time Learning

OST is a Monday-Friday program that provides students in grades K-12 an opportunity to attend daily arts enrichment programming, free of charge, in their own community. In addition, children and families can select from a menu which includes academic remediation, health and wellness, culturally specific and positive youth development activities. OST students are also provided with a healthy snack or meal while attending program. 

Rationale

Research shows that arts have the remarkable ability to positively affect a child in their entirety — influencing their developmental, behavioral, social, and intellectual capacities. CPH afterschool programs are helping schools and communities ensure that their children have access to the arts and can benefit from all that arts have to offer. Benefits of OST include:

• Collaborating with schools and the community to help ensure all children can participate in the arts
• Providing opportunities for students to build on their school-based arts education, further honing their skills and enabling them to master an art form
• Providing children with expanded opportunities to interact with and learn from professional artists
• Offering a venue where children can feel safe, explore a variety of art forms, and learn to express themselves more confidently
• Using the arts as a platform to teach students academic subject matter in fun and interesting ways, helping excite students about learning and becoming more engaged in the subjects 

Approach

Cleveland Play House deploys full-time OST Coordinators at16 CMSD school sites, where they spend their day assisting CPH Teaching Artists, CARE and OST specialist Instructors, and connecting with local non-profits and community members to build and support a robust after-school program for students. The afterschool, OST activities take place Monday-Friday for an average of two hours per day.

Location

OST operates primarily in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD). In the last academic year, the program served 1,900 students in 19 CMSD locations on a daily basis; on average, over 700 scholars participate in our summer programs.

Funding Sources: State Grants, Federal Grants, Contracts