Ready to Implement: A Toolkit for Out-of-School Practitioners

The field of out-of-school time (OST) is often the champion for new initiatives—from social and emotional learning (SEL) to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), to college and career readiness and beyond—given the creativity and flexibility that is inherent to OST programming. As new initiatives gain popularity and increase in prevalence, OST practitioners, intermediaries, and funders embrace these ideas, committing resources to learn new content and adopt new practices only to be hindered by implementation issues.

Research and experience suggest that readiness is a critical factor for quality implementation. The need to implement new initiatives successfully is not something that is going to change or go away. So, what can we do? We can overcome these hurdles if we recognize the importance of readiness and then work to understand, measure, build readiness for implementation going forward.

AIR’s Ready to Implement Toolkit is a research-based resource for out-of-school time (OST) leaders, staff, and teams who want to make data-driven decisions as they prepare for change. Use the toolkit to:

• Stop: Learn more about what readiness is and why it is critical when making a change.
   
• Think: Measure your readiness with AIR’s reliable and validated readiness assessment, then receive actionable scores and access to resources that will help you build readiness for change.
   
• Act: Use the Ready Resource Library to identify tools that will help you build readiness and make changes with confidence.
   

About the Ready Toolkit

With support from The Wallace Foundation and the Susan Crown Exchange, AIR developed the Ready to Implement Toolkit for out-of-school time (OST) leaders and staff. AIR established expert advisory groups of field leaders and practitioners, conducted an extensive literature review, and hosted focus groups and interviews with OST leader and staff experts. Then, we applied what we learned to develop the online toolkit to include a readiness assessment and automatic reporting so practitioners can use their own data to develop their readiness for implementation. This toolkit was developed with support from the field to create something useful for the field.