Welcome to Beyond the Classroom on PBS, thirty nine, I'm your host, Joe Bassetti, and it's a pleasure to sit down with you this evening.

I'm very excited to welcome our guests to the show.

We have three leaders from our local community that are dedicated to ensuring our kids continue learning well after the bell rings.

Of the many challenges that emerge this past year, getting our kids out into the world of fully explore and cultivate their interests, their passions and relationships with others has been one of the most challenging.

In fact, we've been talking about the harm that young people in our communities have experienced because of this disconnect during the pandemic.

And while we're not out of the woods yet, there are organizations like the Allentown Art Museum, the Boys and Girls Club and the Wildlands Conservancy that have been doing the hard work of connecting our kids with resources, activities and, most importantly, one another to ensure that their education doesn't stop at the schoolhouse gate.

Let's get started.

Thank you again for joining us tonight, I am thrilled to be joined tonight by Denise Bauer, who's the senior environmental educator from the Wildlands Conservancy, joining us via Zoom, we have Winston Elzie, who is the CEO of Where the Boys and Girls Club of Bethlehem, and Amanda Lovell, director of public engagement from the Allentown Art Museum.

Thank you to the three of you for joining us this evening and joining the conversation.

We really cannot wait to hear some of the amazing opportunities that our kids can experience through each of the organizations you represent.

So Denise, can we start with you?

Just tell us a little bit about the Wildlands Conservancy, what the mission of the organization is and the kinds of opportunities that kids have for learning their Wildlands conservancy is a land trust and one of our main focuses is the Lehigh River watershed.

We do stream remediation, we do habitat restoration and we do education, which is where you'll find me for almost the past 30 years.

Excellent, and I believe I've been to one of your assemblies, I think.

I won't say when, but I have been to one.

Well, we we have educated hundreds of thousands of people from the time that I first stepped into my role with Wildland.

So I have no doubt that you were.

Well, that's excellent.

Well, thank you again for joining us.

We were eager to have the conversation, Amanda.

Sure.

Hi.

I am the director of public engagement at the Allentown Art Museum.

The Allentown Art Museum has been, I would say, a gem of the Lehigh Valley for a number of years.

Many people might have very fond memories of visiting the museum in elementary school through many of our elementary school programs that we run with field study.

But honestly, I just absolutely love the museum, and I love what a museum can offer to an individual and to families.

And I think sometimes people are a little hesitant to visit a museum because they think, I don't know what I'm looking at.

I don't know what I'm supposed to do in a museum.

You know, what's the purpose of going to a museum?

And I think museums are evolving, and there's so much to do at a museum.

The museums are such a wonderful cultural resource for all ages.

We have programs from pre-K, you know, straight through adulthood.

And so there's really is something for everybody there.

But for me, there's nothing like seeing somebody connect with art, reflect with art, make art, start conversations in front of a piece of artwork.

So I find it to be a really inspiring place.

And so in our roles at the museum and the education team of public engagement team, it's really about building those bridges, breaking down those barriers and helping to make those connections for people.

So you would be able to help a child my age with my stick figure drawings.

Yeah, that's that's good.

That's good to know.

I will put that in my back pocket and book that.

Yes, absolutely.

Winston, thank you for joining us.

You want to give us a rundown, please.

Sure.

Sure.

Thank you for having me.

Glad to be here with Denise and Amanda.

So the Boys and Girls Club of Bethlehem is a youth service organization.

We do youth development programming and what boys and girls clubs do basically is provide after school opportunities for kids.

There's after-school programming that we have program providers and partners that we share our space with and that work with the kids.

But one of our main missions is just to be a place where kids can just be.

I think we're one of the few places where kids can just be, you know what I mean?

There's a lot of free play, a lot of opportunities, a lot of ways that they can be active, that they could be involved.

But there's also a place where they can be maybe who they don't get to be at school or who they don't get to be at home.

If you're not the cool kid at school, you get to be the cool kid of the Boys and Girls Club.

You know, if you're at home and all you do is make your bed or not make your bed.

You know you don't have a bed to make it the boys and girls club.

So that's what we do.

Yeah, that's excellent.

So, Winston, I'll kind of build off of that and ask you a follow up to some of the activities that the boys and girls clubs run.

So I know that there are a litany of them, right?

Could you go through a couple of the ones that you wanted to highlight about the program that parents and caregivers out there would find enormous value in?

Sure, I can definitely do that job.

So we.

The Boys and Girls Club has a whole bunch of different programming and throughout the United States and particularly here in the Lehigh Valley with three different clubs, I'll speak to my organization.

You can find a lot of standardized programs that exist between all.

But then there are also some very relative to the location programs that we have.

So our programs, we have our power hour, which is homework help and completion for homework help and completion after school.

We have what's called the triple play, which is kids doing basically physical education activities after school.

We have what's called high yield activities, which is they're like gathering or almost.

Getting corralling kids together around a topic, whether it be STEM current events, mathematics, just a catching activity for kids to do that has an educational component behind it.

So those are just some of the three that I can tell you off the top of my head.

We also partner with agencies such as Second Harvest Food Bank to provide cooking matters.

We partnered with the great folks here at PBS with the Beth Emery Library, Beth Emery Public Library and so many other agencies and institutions in the Valley just to give kids things to do.

Yeah, that's excellent.

And it's such a wide reach to and there's so many different options that kids can choose from to which is which is oh, definitely.

Yeah, definitely.

And it's nice to be able to provide that, especially because we serve quite a broad age range.

We serve kids between the ages of five and 18.

So to have something to offer to Johnny, who's 18, but also to his kid sister, who's seven, you know, that's that's sometimes a hard needle to thread, right?

But we have a little bit of something for everybody, and we're very grateful to our program providers and to just other community members who look to give up their time and their talents to do things with the children.

That's excellent.

Thank you for that, Winston.

Denise back to the Wildlands Conservancy.

So in addition to all the programs that you do at the watershed, I know that you're very active in the Lehigh Valley in terms of going to schools, offering presentations and educating kids about nature conservation, et cetera.

What does that look like for a parent at home?

And again, for selfish reasons like me, what am I able to do with my children to get them immersed in it?

We like to say that we educate people from the age of two to one hundred and two so they can come to us and take part in our programs.

We can go to them.

But one of the things that excites me the most is to be able to teach parents what they can do at home with their children.

Now you could come to you and me program and you could learn that, or you could listen to me right now and I can give you a few pointers.

I, I noticed over the past few years before COVID that so many children were screen stressed.

We actually had some children come to us with what I have to say was a screen addiction, and they had a very hard time relating to the world around them.

They were fearful and crying.

And I thought about this and I thought the way to meet these kids in the middle was to alter their reality a little bit.

And what I did is gave them a magnifier box, which you dad can buy somewhere for less than five dollars and allowed them as they were wandering to pick up things that grab their attention and put it in the box, which automatically altered their view of the reality of this.

I gave them cups and it was the middle of summer, so I prompted them to look for cicada sheds, but they could wander around and look for four leaf clovers.

They could look for bird feathers.

They could look for anything that was of interest to them and put it in their cup.

And that meant that they now had to focus on the detail of their surroundings, which is something that they're doing when they're playing video games.

So we took those skills, those behaviors that they were stuck on sad and missing and translated it to the real world and taught them how to use them there.

I think you have to begin on a sensory level with with all people when they are experiencing nature, whether it is that two year old and their parent, or it is that one hundred and two year old looking to just reconnect.

So certainly a sensory level, and I could sit here and talk for the next 20 minutes on that, but we can come back to that later.

Absolutely.

It's wonderful, especially that sensory piece, which Amanda, I know that the art museum does a ton of work with also.

Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, just to kind of jump off what you were saying, you know, we're noticing that that level of curiosity and wonder and exploration and experimentation is starting to go away.

You know, we're we're seeing these kids who are on screens and this is the hand motion, you know, that they can do.

We're swiping right or staring at a screen.

And so you have to purposely kind of break up that that brain pattern and be very purposeful about it.

So I think the sensory is really extremely important.

We're seeing, you know, honestly children who don't know how to cut you scissors properly and paste and glue and those fine motor skills and that dexterity, it's so important for other skills in life.

So some people think, you know, art, and it's like drawing a stick figure or drawing like a landscape.

Painting or fine art, but you know, when you bring art into any experience that tactile experience, you know, and as many of the senses that you can bring in to any learning experience that's just going to make that experience that much more enriching.

So sometimes people think of art and they just think painting and drawing, but you know, it is video and animation.

Believe it or not, it is dancing and it's music and it's theater and performing.

And so there's so many things that encompass the arts.

And so that's what we try to do, especially on a Sunday.

We have free family programming and free admission to the museum on a Sunday.

And so I really enjoy watching families come together and make art together.

The screens are away and they're conversing and they're making art together, and art is it's a language all in itself.

We have a program called Art Can that is for individuals who are suffering from Alzheimer's and dementia.

And you know, you have caregivers that come with them to these programs and when they make art together.

It's like they're tapping into something that they haven't seen in a very long time, and they're able to have these connections in these conversations with their loved ones that they haven't been able to have in a long time.

Yeah, so art can open up a lot of your soul, bits of your soul.

It's an extremely enriching experience from many different angles, but it's really important to to break up the screen time and to bring in that level of curiosity and exploration, experimentation and as many senses into the process as possible.

Yeah.

That's so true that you brought that up, because that's something that we've noticed, too over the past several years, a lot of what we do outside of our structured programming is that we allow kids time for socialization.

And so with the socialization, we saw the same thing.

Kids weren't used to talking with each other anymore or playing with each other anymore.

We noticed the same thing, whereas kids used to.

If there was a stack of paper and crayons, they draw pictures like I I can't I can't scroll this, and that's difficult.

And so we've had to.

I like the word that you used and we've had to translate some of what we've done, what we do, and some of those skills that they learn from the technology, which are very good skills and very pertinent to the way that the world is moving.

We can't ignore that.

But how do we marry those things with what we're doing and the things that frankly, kids need?

They need socialization, they need free play, they need art, they need to be outdoors and understand the environment.

So what you guys were saying was spot on.

Yeah, and I feel like one of the things from from the educator perspective also, and we're all educators here in some capacity, right, is these are typically the programs or these are typically the things that I'm going to say are on the chopping block.

But these are the things that get that cut because of time, because we need more time for instruction, et cetera.

And the unfortunate thing is because we're all seeing this right in each of our organizations that that, you know, not just the screen time, but also just the socialization, the interaction.

That collaborative piece is also something that could be missing for a lot of kids.

And now more than ever, that's remarkably important.

You know, so when it comes to accessibility, one of the other things that I wanted to ask and Amanda, I'll start with you in terms of accessibility to art at home, because I know a lot of folks watching, let's say they can't make it on a Sunday, right or transportation might be an issue, et cetera.

What is it that the Allentown Art Museum, what's something I can take home?

What's a piece that I can do with my kids?

Yeah, absolutely.

So we have been during the pandemic, we had to switch gears pretty quickly and we've given out thousands and thousands of art kits that individuals could come and pick up at the museum and take home that had instructions for things that they could collaborate on and do together at home.

But aside from that, we did, like many organizations, have to switch to virtual programming and I say have to.

But as you said, Winston kind of embracing where we're at, you know, and finding a balance between in-person programming and virtual programming.

And so, you know, honestly, any program that we did, we converted into a virtual format.

And so, you know, Zoom has been great for that because you can have that engagement and that interaction.

We do a lot of live art making from our classrooms in which, you know, families can just hop on Facebook, YouTube, our website, and they can experience that art making from home.

We have amazing educational resources such as Discover Art that are available online for educators, so that actually gives them a virtual tour of the museum, and it focuses on a certain theme.

And then we connect that theme to a bigger picture and then to an art making activity to really build and connect all the dots.

So really, there's nothing now that we, you know, we do what we do in person.

We now do virtually, and it's trying to just make it as engaging of an experience so that you feel like you're in person.

But.

Thanks, Denise.

Yeah, go ahead.

We two went virtually with our after school programs, with our camps, with school days.

But what what I found was when you have kids that are isolated at home and you are trying to do nature based education, we don't know if they have an outside space.

We don't know what equipment they have at home.

But even if you don't have a yard there, there is a green space near you.

So what we did was come up with an awful lot of activities that you could do with your preschooler all the way up to your high school age student.

And as I mentioned before, if you start on a sensory level, it's the place to begin with your child when they're very small.

Take them outside and have them touch things, have them feel things that are smooth.

Things that are rough, have them become familiar with the outdoor space, so they're not afraid of it.

When they get a little older, you can collaborate with them with what do you want to look for today when we go outside?

You can make a list.

You can take an empty egg carton and put labels in there to look for and fill.

So now you have collaborated with them and you've created a caregiver or parent bond with this child.

This is your project together.

When they get just a little bit older, you want to perhaps introduce some sort of equipment.

If you're fortunate and you can, you can buy a magnifier box for less than five dollars.

You can buy a digital microscope for less than you're going to spend on a Christmas gift.

You can do all these things with this child and have them take that outside and explore the world with them when they get a little older.

There are many citizen science projects that they could become involved with with the Cornell School of Ornithology or Monarch Watch and do it with them.

Do it on a sensory level.

Look upon nature as a symphony.

It is layers of things.

It is layers of sound.

Go outside with your child and listen for something that's manmade.

Listen for an insect.

Listen for a bird.

Listen to the wind.

Watch what the wind does to a tree.

What does it reveal when those Branson branches and branches shift?

What was behind there that you wouldn't see if you weren't looking at it?

Take them out, be with them, operate on a sensory level and forge forge a bond?

Yeah, no, that's excellent.

And but the Cornell lab of Ornithology, by the way, my understanding is they have every bird sound in the world recorded.

Is that correct?

Yeah, that is.

It's really, really interesting.

Someone as a joke signed me up for the newsletter and I keep getting it, and I quickly found it's not a joke.

It's actually an amazing resource.

Winston, in terms of that, that connectivity piece that Denise and Amanda we're speaking to, you know that that bridging the gap between home and, you know, understanding that you can be somebody else at the Boys and Girls Club.

But what does that piece look like when we talk about the home connection?

So that is a that is a great point, and for us, the home connection, more so looks like how are we engaging with not only not only our programs, but the.

The attitude or the action or the belief system behind our programs to make sure that that still comes across.

So with our power, our program, that's homework completion.

So when we weren't meeting with children and they still had work to complete, what were we doing?

We were making sure that our families had access to the things that they needed, such as loose leaf paper, pencils, notebooks, things that they had to leave at school because they couldn't go back in and get them.

We made sure that they had them after the fact, and they're moving into our current environment when we're looking at how do we make sure that we continue those things, inviting our parents and families to not only know what we're doing, but to have conversations.

We oftentimes ask parents to ask their kids about what they did at the club today and and be involved in those in those conversations for our work.

Our primary customer, so to speak, is the child is to make sure that they're having fun.

You know, a lot of like the best school district in so many other places totally believe in educating the whole child.

And we see ourselves as an extension of that, but we also see ourselves as an extension of home.

So we're encouraging those conversations that are happening here to happen at home.

The lessons that you learn here, go back and tell mom and dad about that at home.

Go and tell your grandmother at home.

So just really having those conversational pieces and so making sure that parents know that they can feel comfortable talking to us and to see what we're doing and then replicating that that system of conversation with that system of communication with those parents is super important.

A lot of what we do does not really translate well into the virtual world, but we were able to become a place while we were open that other partners could come and provide what they did virtually to our kids.

And that was a phenomenal resource to have and then to share with parents, Hey, this is something that's happening.

This is what PBS is offering or what health is offering, or this is what the Boys and Girls Club of Easton is offering or Allentown is offering.

You know, have your child log on.

Here is the information.

So basically becoming a resource center that parents can trust and feel a sense of in with was a really important piece for us.

No, that's excellent.

And in terms of engagement, Winston, what do you what do you see the trajectory trajectory rather?

As with that, so are more parents become actively engaged in this or more students becoming actively engaged in the boys and girls club?

Or are you seeing kind of the inverse or possibly status quo?

It's a bit of both.

It's a bit of both, I would say over the past 10 years, maybe the past seven years, the parental involvement that we've seen here in the Bethlehem club has not been the best of its truncated significantly, but.

I think from COVID and just a shift in what we're doing and particularly how we have.

For a long time, we siloed ourselves away from the schools, we were kind of our own entity and the schools did their own thing and that was great, but we did our own thing and that was great too.

Now we see ourselves as an extension of or as a an addition to those things that are happening.

And so we want parents to feel excited about that.

We want kids to feel excited about that.

So parents are now coming in and asking questions.

We've we've pivoted to become a resource center, so people feel comfortable coming in and ask us questions and say, Hey, I need to find this.

I want to look at that.

And so they they feel comfortable asking those questions and we really relish.

And being that being in that position and being in that trusted place for our families.

And so that's great to see.

And the kids, children will all look kids always will look for something to do and to find something to do.

And it has been just a wonderful thing to see that during this time where kids could have certainly been locked away on their devices, you know, scrolling up and down and liking and and and Snapchatting and who's to what seeing or whatever you want to call it.

They want to come out and do stuff, even if it's to come here and be on their phone.

And we just relish in the fact that we can do that.

So we've seen we've seen a certain uptick in our membership with young people coming and joining our programming, but we've also seen parents being involved as well.

Oh, that's excellent.

And it's such a remarkable resource to Winston, as you said.

And you know, we all know, you know, you're a real pillar of the community here with the Boys and girls club.

And so we appreciate the work that's going on, and we're just happy to hear that then engagement is as strong on both ends.

It's important 90 years worth of people working with kids and doing what we've done, and we just want to continue doing that work and again with the trust of our parents.

Yeah.

If I could just piggyback on something that you said, Winston, I think is really interesting, so something that we're also really working towards and that we've been, I think gaining a lot of really great forward motion with is, you know, I think cultural institutions, maybe in the past kind of looked at themselves with these siloed institutions.

And now I think it's like, let's build a community of resources for, you know, our community members, you know, and let's let's partner and let's work together and kind of be all in this together as opposed to these siloed, you know, institutions not talking to one another.

And I think that makes a huge difference in terms of building community and in just for, you know, individuals in general, knowing kind of, oh, like this is this is just within my community and there's so many things and they all like each other and they can all work together.

And there's something for me and there's a connection between them all.

So, you know, if I can piggyback on, yeah, sure.

You said, you know, I've been sitting here thinking, it's funny you were talking about how much STEM programming you do, Winston.

And of course, we do that steam programming, which is including art and Cornell, I believe, coined the term E stem, which is environmental stem or environmental steam.

I'm seeing a partnership.

All right.

Absolutely.

This is Perfect.

I do not plan this at all.

By the way, this was just it, just a serendipity.

Nature touches everything, no matter where you are, no matter what your interest is.

Take a minute and trace it back to where it came from so you can take any topic and mesh it.

And I partnerships excite me.

The synergy excites me.

Yes, I love it.

Yeah, yes.

Yeah.

Let's all work together.

Yeah, let's do it now.

This is outstanding.

And again, none of these people were paid to be here, folks.

This is just a natural consequence of talking with one another.

But I think again, when I when I was thinking as an administrator, when we planned trips in our own district or, you know, virtual trips or whatever the case is, we're so often looking at those silos, right?

And you know, if you're on the parent side, you're getting a permission slip that says, Hey, there's going to be a demonstration by the Wildlands Conservancy, sign the slip, the online art museum.

You know, we have our annual field trip and the kids get to walk around and hopefully not touch anything right behind the velvet ropes.

Yeah, which is very, very important.

You know, and the Boys and Girls Club, it's like, Yeah, we do have power.

We have these homework assistance programs that we want to get kids involved with, but they may not be, you know, but these things exist separately.

One of the things that I'm really hopeful for, you know, not just based on this conversation, but just another silver lining that kind of came out of this past year and a half has been that connectivity.

And as you had said, Denise, I love that word synergy, really making sure that those connections are made and delivering services that that are beneficial for kids and allow them to develop into the best people they can be.

So again, it's just remarkable.

And I want to thank all of you that actually brings us to the end of our time, which is which it goes very quickly.

I know I was surprised to.

So thank you all, Denise from the Wildlands Conservancy.

Thank you, Amanda from the Allentown Art Museum in Winston, from the Boys and Girls Club of Bethlehem.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you for all the work you're doing for our communities and for our kids.

Keep it up, OK?

As the proverb goes, it takes a village to raise a child, and we hope that you'll consider our program a part of your village.

Do you have questions or comments?

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Go to PBS Thirty nine classroom or join the conversation on social media.

I'm your host, Joe PSAT.

Good night!