Everyday Heroes: Aaron Dworkin, Ed.M.'04

Posted October 1, 2008
By Jill Kipnis

Aaron Dworkin Aaron Dworkin is on a mission to empower children outside the classroom.

As national program director for After-School All-Stars (ASAS), Dworkin, Ed.M.'04, helps mostly elementary and middle school-aged children discover their strengths five days a week. Between the hours of 3 and 6 pm, ASAS programs provide academic support, creative enrichment opportunities, and fitness activities to more than 72,000 low-income children in 13 cities nationwide.

"You can't fail at afterschool," explains Dworkin. "We try to encourage kids to be anything that they want."

While ASAS programs are focused on academic assistance and staffed by certified teachers, keeping children safely engaged in nonacademic activities remains key to the organization's success. A Las Vegas ASAS program, for example, offers ballet taught by a professional dance instructor, while a Los Angeles site has a professional car designer working with interested kids.

"Music is being cut; forget about art," says Dworkin of school-day activities. "There are few physical fitness opportunities for kids that aren't good enough to make a varsity team after the eighth grade. We are trying to broaden kids' horizons, while building on the connection to the school day."

ASAS' roots trace back 18 years to when California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was appointed to the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. After serving as chairman from 1990 to 1993, Schwarzenegger launched the Inner-City Games Foundation to bring afterschool sports programs to at-risk youth. The foundation was renamed ASAS in 2003.

There have always been enrichment programs for kids who "do very well and kids who have serious challenges, but kids in the middle don't tend to get these opportunities," says Dworkin.

Before attending the Ed School, Dworkin would play basketball a few times a week in men's leagues in New York City. He remembers hundreds of men with busy lives scheduling this activity, but wondered how he could funnel their time into helping kids.

Dworkin was inspired to create a basketball-themed mentoring program called Hoops & Leaders. What initially started with 40 children matched with 40 mentors has now, five years later, included approximately 600 young participants and is cosponsored by Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City and the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation.

Dworkin's Ed School degree earned him a post graduate internship with the office of the Commissioner of the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development where he worked on the creation of what is today the country's largest Out-of-School Time (OST) initiative, a large-scale mix of academic, recreational, and cultural activities for kids.

Years after HGSE, Dworkin continues to feel strong ties to the school and has used that connection to further his own goals in education. In 2006, he worked closely with his former professor, Gil Noam, and others to put together the Active Youth Summit conference exploring sports-based youth development programs.

"Programs like America Scores use a particular sport like soccer as a hook to teach kids about leadership," explains Dworkin. "There are programs out there that use tennis, golf, or baseball, but they all operate in a silo. The result from this event was a coalition called Up2Us that promotes all of these programs and allows them to work together."

Today, Dworkin is daily defining his role at ASAS. The organization has never had a national program director before, and Dworkin has been tasked with creating consistency amongst the chapters and organizing new, flagship programs by way of the "commitment and creativity of all our local staff at the chapter and grassroots-school site level."

Dworkin believes that middle school kids especially need the encouragement that ASAS can provide. "At that age, your identity is up for grabs and you are trying to figure out who you are," he explains. "We want to help them find the things that they are great at, and run with it."

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