By Kim Siebert MacPhail
The Corner is a free, after school, open door program at the Town Center building, geared for middle schoolers and administered by the Recreation Department. Now in its fourth year, The Corner has proven to be wildly successful, with as many as 100 kids attending on early release Wednesdays, according to program supervisor Nick Cacciolfi, and between 50 and 80 on other days.
While housed in the same building as Recreation Kids’ Club— although in an entirely separate area— there are several important differences between the two programs, Cacciolfi explained. “Kids’ Club is state certified child care. The Corner is a youth center, modeled in many ways on the Boys’ and Girls’ Club philosophies. We keep attendance logs but kids have free choice to do whatever they want, within our guidelines.”
Cacciolfi said that The Corner emphasizes helping kids develop life skills with social recreation programming. “They learn things without realizing they’re learning. Kids vote with their feet so we want to engage them and make them feel like they belong. We allow kids to pick and choose their activities and we ask their advice about what they want to do. If it’s a reasonable request, we’ll do it. We’ve taken them on a tour or the Police Station, for example.”
The Corner occupies several rooms where kids can socialize, buy snacks from the snack bar, play pool and video games, watch movies, create crafts, do homework, play ping pong. There’s an outdoor area surrounding the Town Center that is also used for pick-up games like frisbee and wiffle ball.
Some programs that The Corner has provided include:
- Halloween contests
- Origami earring and other jewelry-making activities
- Basket weaving
- Movie Days
- Friday night “family dinners”
- Gardening
- Holiday social events
- End of the year luau
- NFL pick-ems
- Build your own gingerbread house, pizza, cupcake, smoothie, grilled cheese etc.
Speakers on a variety of topics have visited: How to be safe when you’re home alone; job hunting 101; public speaking; raising chickens in your backyard.
This November, Recreation Commission Chair Ron Richter will return to ask the kids, as he did last year, for their input on programs and activities they’d like to have.
The program’s brochure states that providing a safe, positive place, staffed with trained adult and high school student staff who follow guidelines of Youth Development Strategy (YDS), is what makes The Corner more than just a place to hang out. The four components of YDS are described as:
- A sense of belonging.
- A sense of usefulness.
- A sense of competence.
- A sense of power and influence.
“We try to let kids work out their issues with one another rather than intervene immediately,” said Cacciolfi. “What we’ve seen here is that walls are broken down between cliques. All kinds of kids who might not interact with each other find they have interests in common.”
But, Cacciolfi said, there are also misconceptions about The Corner that he’d like to dispel.
“We don’t make kids do their homework. We aren’t a day care… We allow kids to come and go and feel it’s up to the parents to set the guidelines for their kids. If a parent calls and asks if their child has been here, we’ll tell them but we don’t insist that kids come or that stay here once they do… We have discipline policies, but we’re not ‘school.’ ”
Other mistaken conceptions about The Corner are that it’s a place where only “the bad kids” hang out or that it’s a free-for-all.
“If a parent came here right after school, she might get the impression that it’s chaos—and it is, in a way,” said Cacciolfi. “Middle School kids don’t have recess and they’ve got a lot of pent up energy after a long day. The noise can be deafening, but it’s music to my ears. I love it when kids can be kids.”
Funding for The Corner comes from two sources: from the Town budget and from the Recreation Revolving Fund. Cacciolfi said, in recent years, that Town funding dropped from an original annual allocation $50,000 to $25,000. The Recreation Revolving Fund has covered the difference in the interim but he hopes for a time when funding will be restored to former levels.
Private support—in the form of cash donations or supplies—is gratefully accepted. For more information, call the Recreation Department at 781-275-1392.
The hours at The Corner are Monday – Friday, 2:30 – 5:30 (12:45 – 5:30 on Wednesdays.) School vacation hours will be posted as dates approach. A direct line to The Corner is staffed during program hours only: 781-953-3014
To register your middle schooler, parents should fill out a Recreation form. Forms can be mailed in, faxed or completed online at bedfordrecreation.org.Again, there is no charge for participation.
See more photographs from The Corner.
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