What is MHASP?
A Community-Oriented Location
Mission Hill After School Program (MHASP) is a Phillips Brooks House program that focuses on helping elementary, middle, and high school-aged students who live in the Mission Hill area. Founded in 1983, MHASP is unique in that it does not serve children from specific schools, but rather from specific housing developments within a neighborhood. Children who attend MHASP live in either the Alice Taylor or Mission Main buildings, which are affordable housing developments for people and families in the Boston area. Program is held in the center Mission Main building, which is a convenient walk from all students who are eligible to attend program, and volunteers from Harvard, Wellesley, and Northeastern pick up and drop off the children at their homes, making it safe and convenient for children, volunteers, and families.The Jobs
There are three main jobs at MHASP, and these brief descriptions will help to understand the rest of this chapter.Counselor: Counselors work one-on-one with the students, and often work closest and the most directly with the students. They are in charge of making sure their child completes homework, behaves appropriately, and safely gets to and from program.
Coordinator: Coordinators oversee each individual classroom for each color group. Typically, each color group has two coordinators per color group each day, and each coordinator attends program twice a week. Besides overseeing classrooms, Coordinators also plan curriculum for each day, and meet with parents to discuss their child's progress, needs, and goals for the year.
Director: A director oversees all activities and groups, and serves as a "link" to other groups and to families. Directors will go in and out of color group classrooms, checking in and being where needed. Certain directors are "links" for certain color groups (i.e. someone is a "red group link") and help connect groups and make sure operations run smoothly. Additionally, both directors and coordinators are responsible for driving the vans of volunteers to and from program.