Afterschool Enrichment
Local DREAM chapters offer a variety of elements for Afterschool Enrichment. First and foremost, DREAM mentors and staff work with families and mentees to understand their academic goals. Then DREAM works to build a supportive community around each mentee: connecting resources, providing homework help, assisting in the college application process, and instructing on academic skills like reading and studying.
DREAM is also in the process of launching a scholarship program to support closing the tuition gap after high school for individual mentees. Please direct any questions to mfoote@dreamprogram.org or you can make a donation using the button (include a mentee's name to have it benefit their post-secondary efforts).
DREAM is the cherry on top
for well-rounded Afterschool Enrichment.
College Guidance
Tutoring and Projects
Educational Exploring
Problem solving is a life skill. Our mentors help with homework and lead fun science and engineering projects!
Adventures can take on many forms! We love educational trips like a day spent at the local museum or fire department.
Our Mentors lead college tours, help mentees set post-high school goals, and assist in reaching those goals.
Afterschool Enrichment Philosophy
Over the course of their time with DREAM, each mentee should receive help and guidance to achieve post-secondary success. Beginning at age 5, DREAM mentees are encouraged to develop their reading and studying skills through one-on-one and group mentoring activities. Homework tutoring, group reading, educational trips to museums and more enrich the early, middle, and high school years of DREAM mentees. These extracurriculars also feed into local college tours with mentors and extended college road trips throughout the country. DREAM mentors work diligently to understand the wants and needs of their mentees; and with those goals in mind individualized support is tailored to each mentee within DREAM.
Learning is integrated into every activity that mentors complete with mentees. Simple team building exercises, fun science experiments, and community garden projects are all examples of the curriculum created by local mentors to engage with their mentees. That said, mentors make up only half of the DREAM experience. DREAM also believes that the role of learning is not one-sided. Instead, just as the mentees learn from their mentors, so too do the mentors learn from their mentees. Similar to the Maria Montessori method of education, mentors and mentees grow and learn together regardless of their age. Mentees bring with them their own background, thoughts, and imaginations which in turn shape the path of DREAM's programming and all DREAMers' experiences. Both mentors and mentees are participants in DREAM programing and therefore are all allowed to grow through their shared time together.
Experiential education is learning through doing; at DREAM we learn through doing AND have fun! DREAM's mentors craft intentional curriculum and skill building into the activities they host. That might mean learning about plants with a local gardener before harvesting cranberries in a bog or talking about the chemistry behind cookie baking while some fresh-made cookies are in the oven! It also means learning through trial and error and taking the math problems off the homework page and into real life! DREAM mentors are some of the most creative and compassionate folks around. They truly know how to help mentees learn without really even noticing that they're learning new things because they're having so much fun.