Afternoon Meeting

The Afternoon Meeting is the out-of-school time complement to the Morning Meeting that helps to ensure continued SEL skill-building with a 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. focus. Morning/Afternoon Meeting is an interactive group practice that teaches explicit social and emotional skills to youth. Morning/Afternoon meetings are rooted in the Responsive Classroom approach, a social and emotional learning (SEL) curriculum that is implemented in K-12 schools nationwide.

The Afternoon Meeting, like the Morning Meeting, entails an intentional circle gathering where the adult models and facilitates four activity segments, namely, the Greeting, the Sharing, the Activity and the Message.

Each segment is designed to:

• incrementally build positive adult-youth and youth-youth communication and interaction,
• engage youth in positive behavior,
• provide opportunities for adult and youth social and emotional skill-building,
• promote equity by giving youth voice and choice during meeting activities, and
• create explicit connections between SEL and academic learning.

The Afternoon Meeting also provides an opportunity to apply signature SEL practices that teach youth how to transition their hearts and minds from one activity to another so that SEL practice may become more integrated across the OST program.