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| After school program logo from Del Mar Union School District |
After school program or in Indonesia popular with the name “extracurricular activities”, or in slang called as “Eskul”, are very interested to be joined by the students. The most popular programs are the programs which are related to sports or physical activities such as football, basketball, martial arts, or outdoor adventure club. For Indonesian students, these activities are fun, interesting, providing future prospect and sometimes fascinating although those require physical interaction which could create fitness and fatigue problem.
The study conducted by researchers from NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development suggested that young people develop significantly after experiencing the after school program particularly in academic outcome. The researchers measured three aspects of academic outcome which were reading skills, youth perceptions of academic abilities, and academic engagement. They found that children who have been doing the extracurricular activities have positive behavior including good communication skills, the ability of managing their temper, and high perception of lesson.
What is the association with being intelligent and sports?
There are many studies reported about the association between sports and brain healthy. Study conducted in 2016 reported that people who regularly exercise are able to delay their reward. The ability of delaying something can be considered that the person is not impatience indicating his well-considered decision. This exactly means that there are association between physical activities which can maintain and organize our lifestyle
Daily activities provide us with lots of daily hassles and most of them could make people feeling depressed. Subsequently, we feel slow, depressed, and sometimes our motivation is gone. But interestingly, physical activities could help people to maintain their motivation and they could avoid the feeling of anxiety among people because of the production of endorphins which are painkiller. Biologically speaking, when the brain encounters problems, it will associate to neural directly affecting the nerve system. As a result, the body will completely feel exhausted and it could affect our concentration in receiving stimuli in low condition.
Based on those two studies, it can be concluded that physical activities are able to influence our body particularly in brain health.
What developments have been found?
According to the study conducted involved with 256 youth and they were in third to eight classes. To obtain reliable findings, the study took time either in fall and spring by collecting three academic types involving youth and the staff, which were the reading skills, academic abilities and academic engagement. The observation of the study lies on the dependency of students to their engagement either in form of activities while in the inside or outside the class.
The study found that the after school environment created and provided positive atmosphere so the students were able to magnify their social and behavioral activities. In short, the students that join the after school program have confident as a learner. This study also suggests that the environment provides significant influences to the children during their development ages.
To be concluded, the after school program scientifically provides advantages to the learners. Both physical and mental characteristics are formed during the after school program so the learners develop in stable condition, implying the ability of thinking either based in logical or emotional aspect.