His Place Ministries serves at-risk children, youth, and families in the Spring Hill/Spring Garden/Troy Hill neighborhoods of Pittsburgh’s Northside. Through its Believe & Achieve Afterschool Academy, His Place provides free, high-quality afterschool enrichment programming for students in grades K-5 at Spring Hill Elementary. His Place also provides continued afterschool programming for local middle school students through its community center on Rhine Street. These programs focus on enrichment in math, reading, and STEM and also encourage the development of key social-emotional skills such as growth-mindset, resilience, GRIT, and curiosity.
About Believe & Achieve Afterschool Academy:
The academy believes the purpose of education is not to create an army of test-takers; rather, the purpose is to help children flourish and fulfill their full potential. Believe & Achieve’s vision is to build a loving community and a creative educational environment where children can grow into creative, confident, critical thinkers; to become students who fall in love with learning, so they can lead great lives and pursue their own unique passions.
According to the academy, education is when children learn:
- Content
Foundational content (like fact fluency in mathematics) as well as interest-specific content (such as how far the earth is from the sun) are key elements of education which must be preserved, not neglected. - SEL
Growth mindset, mental dispositions (like curiosity), and related social-emotional skills (such as self-control, GRIT, and resiliency) are shown to predict future academic success better than IQ. - Thinking Tools
When children acquire multiple tools for thinking – such as chunking (breaking larger problems into smaller, more readily comprehended pieces) – they are empowered to flexibly learn new, challenging concepts. - Lifelong Learning
Believe & Achieve helps students fill a “backpack of skills” with core content, social-emotional capabilities, and thinking tools to take with them wherever their learning continues.