About 130,000 Missouri youth participate in after school programs designed to improve academic achievement. The programs include a variety of activities such as homework help, arts and crafts, and STEM projects.
Natalie Hampton with the Missouri AfterSchool Network told a Missouri House committee on Tuesday that the program’s ability to produce results is determined by participation numbers.
“Youth vote with their feet,” she said. “So, if the program is not high quality and engaging, youth are not going to stay there. So, it’s important that there is engaging hands-on activity that there are positive interactions between youth and other caring adults as well as their youth peers.”
Hampton spoke to the House Special Interim Committee on Workforce Innovation and Technology. It has been holding hearings since the summer and hopes to present findings to the general assembly to better meet the needs of Missouri’s workforce for several decades.
Missouri University of Science & Technology in Rolla has manufacturing career tech prep programs targeting Missouri’s middle school youth. That’s according to Mark Cowsert with the Missouri AfterSchool Network, who said that the effort positively impacts student achievement and exposes tomorrow’s adults to new career options. He told lawmakers that the key is getting them interested in the afterschool program before they get to high school.
“Students come and have an experience,” Cowsert said. “They visit those factories. Then they come and they see what’s happening on the campus at (Missouri) S&T in manufacturing. Then, that is followed up with a 6–8-week curriculum where those students then go and they learn all about manufacturing and then that’s coupled with, into that cohort, experience.”
Because of the Missouri Manufacturing Academy’s success, industry leaders in healthcare and construction hope to create catered programs to do the same in the near future.
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