Professional Development Opportunities

To help ensure that we see better student outcomes as a city and state, PASA offers capacity building, technical assistance, and professional development supports for after-school providers throughout Rhode Island to improve staff capacity, enabling them to offer high-quality programs. 

Support for RIPQA

PASA has a team of trained Quality Advisors available to support after-school providers interested in using the RIPQA for self-assessment and continuous improvement. These advisors help providers create an observation and assessment schedule, observe their programs, and use the results of those observations to develop a quality improvement plan with specific action steps.

Core Competencies

Core Competencies refer to the observable skills and dispositions needed by professionals in order to provide high-quality after-school experiences for children and youth. Competencies are concrete, observable, and achievable; and establish standards of practice that strengthen the profession.

To ensure Rhode Island’s after-school and youth development workers can achieve positive youth outcomes, RIASPA, PASA, CHILDSPAN, and Kids Klub, as well as a variety of after-school education consultants, created the Rhode Island Core Knowledge and Core Competencies for Afterschool and Youth Development Professionals.

The ASYD Core Competencies reflect state developments and initiatives, as well as national trends in after-school and youth development. They can be used to establish individualized professional development plans; assist administrators/directors in the creation of job descriptions; serve as a foundation when designing curriculum or professional development, etc. In addition to helping the field, the Core Competencies may also be used to outreach to other constituencies, including trainers, higher education, families, funders, and state agencies.

Statewide Professional Development

PASA partners with the Rhode Island Department of Education to provide a menu of workshops each year that align with the Rhode Island Program Quality Assessment(RIPQA)and meet the current needs of after-school providers at 21st Century Community Learning Centers throughout Rhode Island.

We also partner with RIASPA to produce an annual, statewide professional development calendar and two Afterschool Mini-Conferences per year. The Mini-Conferences are thematic one-day conferences designed to provide after-school professionals with a range of workshops on topics relevant to the field in a short, easy to access manner.

Workshops, conferences, and other professional development opportunities open to RI educators and providers will be posted below as they become available. 

Now Available: RI Statewide Afterschool Professional Development Calendar

The Rhode Island Afterschool Plus Alliance (RIASPA) and PASA have teamed up with generous support from RIDE’s 21st CCLC Initiative to bring you the winter/spring, 2014 professional development calendar. 

We are excited to offer workshop opportunities on many Fridays this winter and spring in an effort to connect out-of-school time professionals to the resources they need to focus on quality improvement. Workshop participants are charged a small fee to offsett space and trainer costs. We try to keep fees low so the these professional development opportunities stay as affordable as possible. 

Download the calendar and sign up form here.

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