Expanding Opportunities for Learning Beyond the Classroom

As a young teacher and single mom, Liza Flowers relied on expanded learning programs to give her child a safe place to go before and after school.

“My daughter Dakotah loved going to the expanded learning programs,” Flowers explained. “She made friends, she was introduced to different activities and was exposed to many things she may not otherwise have been exposed to.”

One day Dakotah came home, ecstatic about a paper airplane activity. After that, “she always wanted to learn more and more about airplanes. Fast forward to today, she's a graduate of Georgia Tech and she's a mechanical engineer for General Atomics.”

To Flowers, that’s an example of how expanded learning’s fun, engaging learning experiences help students find their passions and “find out who they are and what they can become.”

And she should know. Flowers has served as director of expanded learning at SDCOE since January 2024.

Expanded learning can occur during any out-of-school time such as before school, after school, intersession, summer, and even on weekends. It was in the news recently after the Trump administration withheld funds for the 21st Century Learning Center (21st CCLC) program, a federal grant that benefits more than 32,000 high school students each year across 30 districts and 22 charters. Total hours of student participation in the 21st CCLC After School Safety and Enrichment for Teens (ASSETs) expanded learning program for the 2024-25 school year exceeded 1.5 million hours, with more than 50,120 unique scheduled sessions.

With the funding restored, SDCOE's Expanded learning team, which also includes Lina Ledezma-Cortez, Dr. Lisa Johnson Davis, Davina Hale, Jose Garibay-Najera, Jacqueline Linenberger, Melissa Minas, Anabel Mireles, and Christopher Stephens — can get back to what they do best: changing lives.

Take Addison, a student at Mountain Empire High School.

Her school features an FFA (formerly Future Farmers of America) program as one of its 21st CCLC ASSETs offerings. Students learn about an area of agriculture that interests them, then they gain hands-on experience in that field.

“I didn't know I had a lot of leadership skills until I joined FFA, like speaking skills or discipline skills,” Addison said. “FFA is giving me opportunities and teaching me life skills, and how to speak and to become a leader. When I do get a job, I'll be prepared, and if I do get a career in [agriculture], I'll have experience.”

With a focus on students in high-poverty and low-performing schools, 21st CCLC ASSETs programs provide academic enrichment activities that build a sense of community and belonging while supporting high school students’ regular academic programming.

ASSETs offerings are also fun, by design.

“When kids are excited to go to the expanded learning program, they’re excited to go to school,” said Flowers. “That promotes school connectedness and improved attendance, especially among our most vulnerable students. Research also shows that students who attend expanded learning programs regularly do better in school.”

At Orange Glen High School in Escondido, students in the ASSETs program took their learning to the beach, trading textbooks for surf boards.

“Most of our students, until we started this program, had never seen the ocean and certainly had never surfed,” said Doug Paulson, their teacher.

Orange Glen’s ASSETs offering helps students know that they belong in the outdoors and teaches them how to tackle and overcome barriers.

“If you look up and down the beach, there are not a lot of people that look like our students,” Paulson said. “But once they've been here, they come in with a new confidence. And seeing that new confidence is something that will carry them into other activities in other parts of their lives.”

In this way, expanded learning helps support both of SDCOE’s strategic priorities: fostering belonging and improving student outcomes through transformational experiences.

“I know, because I have seen it and lived it,” said Flowers. “My daughter is my reminder that the work we do at SDCOE truly has the power to change lives, to reduce poverty, and to increase belonging.”