text: In this third episode of the podcast, Georgia hosts Brittany Jacobs, Library Director at the Burlington Public Library in Iowa, and Edward Franklin, President and CEO of Voice of Hope Ministries in Texas. Brittany and Edward talk about the essays they contributed to the book, which explore the relationship building that allows OST programs to go beyond short-term benefits to sustained and transformative influence for individuals and communities.
  In this third episode of the podcast, Georgia Hall, Ph.D., director of the National Institute on Out-of-School Time (NIOST) hosts Brittany Jacobs, Library Director at the Burlington Public Library in Iowa, and Edward Franklin, President and CEO of Voice of Hope Ministries in Texas. Brittany and Edward talk about the essays they contributed to the book, which explore the relationship building that allows OST programs to go beyond short-term benefits to sustained and transformative influence for individuals and communities.
  Brittany reads from her essay “Sanctuary,” about how libraries can offer out-of-the-box learning opportunities for youth. She talks about an anxious fifth grader who came to the library looking for help with his math homework and soon became a library regular, and her experience empowering elementary schoolers by connecting them with young inventors through social media.
  Edward reads from his essay “Afterschool as Mission,” about his personal experience finding autonomy and responsibility as a young person in his church community. He discusses his work with young people during the out-of-school time hours, as a youth minister, "to extend grace" and keep youth on successful life trajectories.
  Brittany and Edward’s essays appear in the book co-edited by NIOST, The Heartbeat of the Youth Development Field: Professional Journeys of Growth, Connection, and Transformation. Through both research and personal essays, the book shines a light on the intricate connections between research and practice, touching upon both the vulnerability and triumph of youth development work. The passionate voices of youth workers in this volume lead to the inescapable conclusion that programs and policies for youth must be informed by these same voices and the values they express.
  About the National Institute on Out-of-School-Time:
  For 40 years, NIOST has been a leader in defining, shaping, and promoting out-of-school time (OST) as a distinct professional field with evidence-based quality standards. We bridge the worlds of research and practice to provide OST directors, staff, planners, school administrators, community leaders, and others with research, training, evaluation, and consultation to enhance and improve the quality of programs for all children and youth. https://niost.org
  NIOST is a program of Wellesley Centers for Women, a research and action institute at Wellesley College that is focused on women and gender and driven by social change.
  About Brittany Jacobs:
  What started out as an insatiable curiosity as a child, and a banning from the local public library at eight years old, has evolved into my career as a public librarian and children’s book author and illustrator. (Don’t worry, the irony is not lost on me.)
  With a focus on curriculum development for informal learning environments during undergrad (BA) and an emphasis on human-centered design and equity in graduate school (MSLIS) I have steeped myself in informal pedagogies and best practices in order to make learning fun and transformative for all who walk into the library.
  By harnessing the power of play, partnering with established community groups and supporting classroom initiatives, I’m helping to re-write the narrative of what a public library is as well as what OST learning looks like in-between the stacks.
  A public library director by day, my evening and weekends are all about books in a different context altogether -- writing and illustrating them. You can find me on the shelves with Duck, Duck, Tiger, Big Breath: A Guided Meditation for Kids, The Kraken’s Rules for Making Friends, Transforming Your Library into a Learning Playground, or in-between them as Director.
  About Edward Franklin:
  Edward Franklin has over 30 years of experience serving in out-of-school-time programs in underserved urban communities in America. He has led Voice of Hope Ministries, a Christian OST organization, located in Dallas, Texas for 18 years as the President and CEO. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Temple University, a Master of Divinity and a Master of Arts in Religious Counseling from Westminster Theological Seminary and is in his final stages of a Doctor of Ministry degree from Dallas Theological Seminary. He is a NIOST National Afterschool Matters Fellow, a White-Riley-Peterson Fellow, and a Christian Community Development Association Leadership Cohort alumnus.
  He is passionate about his work and faith and dedicated to serving children and families residing in underserved communities domestically and abroad through quality, Christian, OST programs.
  Youth work is a sacred opportunity to make a significant difference in the lives of children and youth. In the just released book, The Heartbeat of the Youth Development Field: Professional Journeys of Growth, Connection, and Transformation, the authors use research and personal essays to shine a light on the intricate connections between research and practice, touching upon both the vulnerability and the triumph of youth development work. The passionate voices of youth workers in this volume lead to the inescapable conclusion that programs and policies for youth must be informed by these same voices and the values they express. Welcome to this conversation on The Heartbeat of the Youth Development Field. My name is Georgia Hall from the National Institute on Out-of- School Time at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College. The Heartbeat of the Youth Development Field is the latest volume in the series, Current Issues in Out-of-School Time, which is published by Information Age Publishing under the direction of series editor Dr. Helen Malone at the Institute for Educational Leadership. My guests today are Brittany Jacobs, Library Director at Burlington Public Library in Iowa and Edward L. Franklin, President and CEO of Voice of Hope Ministries in Texas. Welcome, Brittany and Edward. This is our third conversation exploring the stories shared through personal essays of professionals working in the youth development and OST field. One of the themes we encounter in the book essays is the interplay between relationship building and impact. Professor and author Ingrid Nelson in the book points to the threshold past which OST programs go beyond short-term benefits or impacts to sustained and transformative influence. And in writing the forward to this book, Michelle Seligson suggests that one of the greatest gifts and contributions of out-of-school time programs is how they support children and youth to stay connected and continue to feel that they are cared for, that they are seen and cared about.
  And it's this crucial element that makes all the difference in healthy human development. I am seen, I can express myself without fear, and I matter. And this is the role and mission of youth work so meaningfully illustrated by the stories and the science in this book. I'm going to turn to Brittany first. Brittany, your essay is titled "Sanctuary." Now, you are a public librarian. Many of us when we think of our public library, we are very focused on the process of borrowing and returning books and possibly paying fines. But you have another image that you have come to, and an understanding of the place we call library. And in recent years, it's become clear that libraries can be optimal settings to offer enriching out-of-school time experiences and not limited to just the reading of books. Your essay's titled "Sanctuary," and I absolutely love that image of the library as a sanctuary. And I wondered, Brittany, if you could just read that first part of your essay for us.
  Absolutely. And thank you for having me here, Georgia. It was an average Wednesday morning, spent dancing in bubbles, singing finger plays, and reading books with 20 children. It was later that afternoon when a new tween walked into the room with his grandma, and the routine of my day was disrupted. This 12 year old boy was five days away from finishing fifth grade, all of which was being done remotely, and he was desperate for help with his math homework. Naturally, I was the one called upon to assist him, as fifth grade math falls under my "other duties as assigned," since I'm a public youth librarian. My new friend was on the brink of tears as he explained to me that his mom left him when he was little, his dad works all day and doesn't come home until late, and his grandma doesn't understand the assignments.
  I was quick to put him at ease and we started to work on his assignment. After about an hour, he seemed to lighten up a bit and he asked about this whistling noise that was coming from the ceiling. Our building whistles when the wind blows, due to the sharp pitch in our library roof. I nonchalantly told him that it was just another resident ghost of an author who now lives at the library and continued going over the equation he was stuck on. He stared at me for about 10 seconds before he busted out laughing, releasing all of that built up tension that he had brought with him into the library. It was a small way to joke around and to become more familiar with him. And for three days in a row, my new friend came to the library and we worked together on finishing up his fifth grade year. He became a regular at the library, and a few weeks later I heard him tell one of his friends that the building was haunted, though he seemed to take creative liberty and gave the ghost a name and a backstory. This youth who had exhausted his resources at home when it came to finishing his math homework had come to know the library as not the last resort, but maybe the first when it comes to help, no appointment, payment, or library card needed. From early literacy in the morning to homework help and telling ghost stories in the afternoon, librarians are part of the OST workforce and are helping to support youth in unique and long-lasting ways.
  Thank you, Brittany, for sharing that. And I love this notion of him first coming to you in tears and then you talk about him busting out laughing, you know, sort of in this same encounter that you have with him. And I know even for myself growing up and utilizing our library a lot growing up, the idea that you present of the library, no appointment, payment, or library card needed, you know, is a fresh and a new perspective on the value that the library offers within a community and for young people. And this is something that you go on to talk about in your essay also. You also include a very interesting story about your own personal family experience with the library, and perhaps when the library was sort of an institution that seemed very, very focused on the borrowing and the returning of books.
  And you talk about your own family being for some point banned from the library due to a lack of returning some books. And here you are now in your own career as a public librarian. So there's a really amazing irony there. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about what you also described later on in the essay in that the programming that you end up doing and specifically the Invention Convention that you talk about as a way that you engage young people in a whole other type of learning that can occur within the walls of a public library. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about that.
  Absolutely. One of the greatest things about public libraries is that we're not held to school standards or state standards. So we get to really bust learning out of the box and infuse it with creativity and fun in a way that a lot of classrooms these days can't do for one reason or another. So this one program in particular was called Invention Convention, and I did this in a suburb library outside of Chicago. It was a multi-generational or multi-aged program. It was for elementary, generally speaking. So we had some first and second graders all the way up through, I think we might have even had some middle schoolers now that I'm thinking back on it. So potentially up through sixth or seventh grade. And it was loosely labeled as Invention Convention. It was a week long program. You come every day for a few hours and each day we posed a new challenge that a specific community group or globally that we are facing. And they were challenged to come up with an invention where they would go through the process of ideating and team building. And all these things feed directly into 21st century skills, which feed directly into healthy democracy. So when I'm talking about fun programs for kids that are seemingly easy to pull off, what I mean is we're helping to create healthy democratic processes from a very young age. And that's another really exciting element of public libraries is you get to see democracy played out on a day-to-day basis with people of all ages. So this program, the beginning of the week, the kids spent a lot of their time on the prototyping, and very little time on the collaboration and the front end of things. And about midway through the week, I reached out to a few young inventors, the two young inventors of LuminAID, which is a light that was invented that's solar powered and specifically used for refugee camps.
  I reached out to them on Twitter and they responded and they gave a little note of encouragement for me to pass on to the kids who were also working on the problem of creating light for people in areas who don't have access to electricity. And that connection, that real world connection to these two, like, bonafide legitimate inventors who were speaking directly to these children through Twitter, totally flipped the switch of the narrative of what was happening the next day, or actually that day and the days following. Most of the time spent in the program was on ideating and collaborating and truly trying to come up with a solution and less time on the prototype. So it went from, let's see if we can build this cool thing with Legos and the cool accoutrements that are available, to, we could actually make something that could create change.
  The two inventors that we had reached out to on Twitter were young people when they created LuminAID. So it kind of going back to the idea of busting learning outside of the box, this is connecting kids with ideas that they can be changemakers now and that they matter. And going back to the quote you had said at the beginning of this podcast by Micki, this was a really big way to make kids feel seen not only in the library space, but on a community level and even on a global level and helping to make them feel empowered. And it's a great and exciting way to be able to support their educational journeys in the OST field without the parameters of testing or scoring or standards just learning for learning's sake.
  Yeah, it's an incredible...your essay and what you've talked about is an incredible window into the the overarching value that the library can play as a part of the OST arena and helps us remember to think about the library as a resource in way broader ways than we might have been used to it or thinking about it growing up, et cetera. I wondered, Brittany, if you could read that last part of your essay also for us.
  My desk is a constantly shifting stage of sticky notes where I jot down ideas, suggestions, and good finds that I'm eager to share with my youth. I know that young people want to be seen and heard, and this seems to be especially true for tweens and teens as they are learning who they are and what they like. By actively listening and providing youth with opportunities to explore their interests, I'm able to establish and grow meaningful relationships and provide a safe and supportive environment where they can feel free to be themselves and explore their curiosities in a way that they might not be able to in other types of learning environments. My work is an investment in the lives of youth and hopefully inspires learning outside of standardized tests and classrooms, faith in community, and hope in a world where darkness and doom can sometimes prevail. I have witnessed firsthand the sense of belonging and empowerment that youth have discovered with us from establishing their autonomy by managing their own library cards and accounts to exploring newfound passion for learning and becoming connected with ideas and people across the globe to be seen, heard, and supported is a powerful and transformational experience for these youth that can contribute to a more productive and successful future for them down the road.
  Thank you so much, Brittany, and there's such a great connection to now moving on to Edward and his essay in the sentence that you read about witnessing firsthand the sense of belonging and empowerment that youth have discovered with you in the library. And, you know, again, going back to Micki's words too about being seen and heard and supported and how that's so powerful and transformational. And Edward, I want to invite you to read the part of your essay for us also, but I also want to speak to the front end of it in when you introduce your essay in the first part of it, you talk a little bit about your own growing up and the sort of the regulation and the routine and rules around your you know, your daily life as a young person and the routine.
  I think that's the one really important part of it, that there was a routine to everything that you did and there were expectations and you knew what was coming next, et cetera, and where you ended up really finding this huge source of expanding yourself and discovering yourself ended up to be your church community. And it offered a whole world outside of the routine of just growing up in the neighborhood. And so I wondered if you could start to read the essay where all of that transformation sort of happens for you too. Before you get into helping transform young people's lives, there was also a leadership transformation for you.
  Yes. Well, thank you Dr. Hall for this opportunity and thank you Brittany for sharing as well. It was in my teen years that I first held a real leadership position. It was a Friday night after our usual youth choir rehearsal and meeting time at our church. The 25 or so young people who attended that night were waiting for dismissal. My bishop came from his office in the back and asked who wanted to be vice president of the choir. No one volunteered. So I raised my hand. He said, "Okay, Junior Trustee Franklin—" That's what they called me because my dad was the chairman of the trustee board— "Come on back to my office." He explained the importance and responsibility of the role to me and then basically told me that God was watching, so I better take it seriously. I wanted to quit right then and there because I felt the weight and responsibility unto God for the youth under my care.
  My first official task was to sell tickets at the pastoral anniversary dinner. We ended up selling a lot of them, and that began my leadership journey in OST. When I turned 18, they separated the youth from the young adults and I became the president of the youth department. As president, my role was to provide programming for the youth when they were at church, after school, on weekends, and during the summer. That was right up my alley. Recruiting people to create fun things was easy for me to do as a youth leader. I was able to try new things and make plenty of leadership and logistical mistakes that helped me develop and fine tune my skills and become the person that I am today.
  Thanks, Edward. So this was really, you really were thrust into this leadership position and you were and of course no one else raised their hands, but how lucky we are that you did raise your hand, right. And it all played out in a wonderful career in the work that you do that you were willing to take on that leadership. So tell us more about...Your title of your essay is Afterschool as Mission, and tell us more about what that means for you in saying those words, and especially using that word "mission" and you know, how that has come to be something that you believe in.
  Yes, yes. All right. Well, you know, when I was growing up I really heard the word "mission." You know, we had missionaries. I heard missionaries and we had a missionary board at the church. But basically when you thought about "mission," it was always about, you know, what we do to everybody else in all parts of the world. It was just, you know, an activity from us to others. But you know, I had an opportunity to go to college. I graduated from Temple University and then right after that went to graduate studies at Westminster Theological Seminary. And I heard less about missionaries per se as individuals, but more about the concept of mission. And in any discipline, you know, you ask someone, what's the definition of your discipline? And you'll get 500 different definitions.
  It's the same thing for mission. You know, you ask somebody, what is mission? Oh, it's X, Y, Z, 1, 2, 3. You ask somebody else, well, it's 1, 2, 3 X, Y, Z, and it just goes on and on and on. But, you know, I found one definition of mission that I thought was very relevant and appropriate for me and what we do here at Voice of Hope. And mission actually was a young man, Gogan. He says, mission is a task given to God's people everywhere to communicate the good news, not only with words, but also with their lives and deeds. And like I said, I lead an organization here in Dallas, Texas called Voice of Hope Ministries. And we are an afterschool program and for us, afterschool is mission and it's afterschool where we are able to share the good news of the gospel with everyone who comes through our door.
  And so that's the overall concept of afterschool as mission. Afterschool is a viable vehicle for those in the Christian community to extend and share the good news of Jesus Christ. Not only with words, but with our lives as well. You know, in a part on our website, you'll see that we exist to evangelize, to educate and empower the kids so that they become productive Christian citizens. And you know, when we say productive, obviously we want our kids to contribute to the economic vitality of their communities and world. When we say productive, that's what we mean. When we say Christian, obviously, we want our children and youth to be exposed to the gospel of Jesus Christ so that their hearts are transformed and they grow up to be equipped to live an informed, committed and passionate life for Christ. And of course, when we say citizens, we hope and pray that the kids that we serve will develop a Christ-like concern for communities, both local and worldwide. So again, to reiterate, afterschool as mission means that we recognize that the afterschool space is a viable space to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. We want to leverage the power of afterschool to share the power of the gospel.
  Thank you Edward for sharing all of that. And one thing that I love about both your essays is that it shines such a light on some very traditional community organizations who have stepped into that role in afterschool, as you point to, to offer something above and beyond the regular at home by yourself were kind of experiences you talk about in the beginning of your essay being what was traditionally known as a latchkey kit. And so in your work now, you offer this alternative of empowering and important experiences as part of growing up and see that as part of the mission of your organization to fill that time and fill that space afterschool with those kinds of experiences, and so true about the library and about other community organizations such as the church. So thank you for sharing all of that. In the closing part of your essay, you talk about your work with one particular young person, RJ, and I wondered if you would just share that last part of your essay also.
  Sure, sure. One ministry moment I had with a young man from our program still impacts me today. RJ was our local neighborhood daredevil. I mean, he was very mechanical inclined and would work on and illegally ride his all terrain vehicle all over the neighborhood, including through our campus at a high rate of speed. He was a frequent participant in our OST programs and activities, especially our basketball program. We worked with RJ for years, but it seems as though we were making a minimal impact on his life. One day RJ was ripping through our campus again on his ATV and caused several deep track deep tire tracks in our open field area. The damage was clearly visible and everyone including RJ knew he was the culprit. I was very upset with his behavior, but I felt led by the Holy Spirit to call him to my office.
  He later acknowledged that he thought I was going to call the police on him. Instead, I invited him to participate in an overnight Christian camp experience and said that although I was very upset by his behavior and the damage he caused on our campus, I was going to extend grace and mercy to him and pay for him to attend this camp. He later shared that our interaction and the experience of the Christian camp was the turning point in his life. With the act of sending him on a privileged experience after what he had done, he was finally able to understand what grace—unmerited favor—really was. That extension of grace to him through the experience of OST was the start of his heart warming and turning to the truth of the gospel. Today, RJ as a hardworking adult with a stable job that he enjoys. His life is on what one would call a "successful" trajectory. And he often retells this story to me and others as a testimony to the value of Christian community-based OST programs.
  Thank you, Edward. I appreciate your sharing, and Brittany also. I wanna thank both of you, Brittany and Edward for sharing your stories today. The book The Heartbeat of the Youth Development Field, which includes the essays from Brittany and Edward and many others, along with research chapters focused on journeys into the youth field's relationship building and connection and transformation is available at www.niost.org. This is Georgia Hall from the National Institute on Out-of- School Time at Wellesley College, and I wish you well.