The time is 4:30 p.m. in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

At a local elementary school, parents are lining up to pick up their children from after-school clubs, where they’ve just finished weeding gardens, programming robots and making birthday cards for their classmates.

Down the street, middle schoolers are grabbing a snack after the last class of the day and getting ready to build LEGO robots, learning how to speak a new language and training for a 5K with their friends.

At the high school next door, students prepare for debates, fine-tune competition-ready robots, and put the finishing touches on artwork bound for the district show.

Right now, thousands of youth across Tulsa are thriving in after-school clubs.

I know what that feels like.

As a student, I spent countless hours after school practi

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