Jump Start 2026

You don’t have to be a dancer to provide highly engaging dance opportunities in your afterschool program. The arts are a great way to target at-risk youth to reshaping their paths to positively express themselves. Participants will move and groove in learning how a dance program can be designed and promoted to fully engage youth in afterschool. Backed up by the most recent arts in afterschool research, attendees will see how a dance program can impact youth and walk away knowing how to teach a routine, provide stage performance tips, understand the realities of the dance industry, how to get youth engaged in their community through dance, and how to positively expose youth to the dance world. Let’s dance!

Managing a classroom can feel quite overwhelming for newer professionals in Out of School Time. In this session you will learn top strategies for building classroom culture and norms. Attendees will walk away with easy tips to make your classroom feel calm and in control.

How can a simple deck of cards teach deep mathematical thinking? This hands-on workshop explores how elementary afterschool educators can use simple magic tricks to reinforce foundational math concepts in a high-engagement setting. Participants will analyze how card matrices and number puzzles serve as playful, concrete representations of abstract ideas like place value, operations, and pattern recognition.Rather than just learning tricks, you will discover how to guide young learners to look past the "magic" and use logic to explain how the math works. You will walk away with an interactive toolkit of easy-to-teach routines, printable resources, and differentiation strategies perfectly suited for the relaxed, high-energy environment of afterschool programs.

Afterschool professionals working with girls ages 8–14 know the moment when a confident kid suddenly goes quiet, stops raising her hand, or lets a friend take the lead instead of speaking up. This session is for staff, coordinators and admin who want practical tools to reverse that trend. Using Girls on the Run Utah’s movement-based curriculum as a model, you’ll learn why physical activity is one of the most effective ways to build girls’ confidence, resilience, and emotional regulation, as well as how to bring that approach into your own program. Come ready to move, and to walk away with tools that make a real difference for the students you serve.

Our session centers the work of a group of Spy Hop's film students--a brief PSA called ""Orange Soda."" We will explore the various ways that making art together strengthens young people and provides them with the tools and opportunities to live healthy and productive adult lives. Join us to examine how the act of creating art together itself becomes a protective factor for young people and to consider how you can expand your own thinking about art as a protective tool.