Earn and Learn Part 2

I cried all the way home from Earn and Learn’s work site back in the city where our camp bus dropped us off, some 30 kids who had spent 10 days outside of time in a Wisconsin woods as family, learning from experience that their peers matter as much as themselves and that they each matter as much as anybody. I curled up in a ball in the hatchback of my parents car. My heart ached like I had never known. I remember a light sky, my wet face, that I rocked as I cried and physical pain in the center of my body, pain of home sickness for a place I would never return to. As I write this, I cry. I know that little girl holding tight to her knees. I know her sincere heart, her intense desire to grow, to shine out. She has company all over the world. O God, let us reach the children while they still know they can sing. That’s the thing. Rick Weiland believed in each of us. He gave his heart and soul to Earn and Learn. Ease is not the way to happiness, nor is discouragement. Challenge, loving mentors, accountability and loving encouragement grow a child. Love and respect are key. We had all that. Going back to the life that had begun to break my spirit knocked the wind out of me. Thankfully, my parents didn’t try to change my sadness. They drove in silence.
I’d decided earlier that I would work at the after school work site over the remaining days of summer. Extra money and more time around these new friends was appealing. Day one, 8 hours stuffing envelopes in a cement room with hard cold floors easily changed my mind. I lost all enchantment with Earn and Learn by days end. The way a child does, I decided I was done. I would not be returning to the worksite in the summer or over the school year. I had fun at camp but no thank you to whatever this other boring, non recreational aspect was. It wasn’t the joy of nature. It wasn’t full of laughter, feeling dawn’s light breeze on my skin. I quit.
Instead of returning to the work site the next day as I’d said I would (remember the statement of commitment?), I went to Allison’s house. My parents showed up there after a while, said it was time to go. This was not unusual, so okay, whatever. Then I noticed we weren’t going home. Where to then? The Work site??! NO! Not back to that place. I don’t like it. I don’t want to be there!
They responded with silence. They ignored my tantrum, ignored me kicking the inside of the car, calling them liars, saying they couldn’t make me! They were helping me honor my commitment to see this program through for a year. I was huddled up crying in the car again, this time desparately angry.
When we pulled into the Earn and Learn driveway Rick came out to greet me. He wasn’t tough or stern. He saw me. He smiled so kindly. He joked around and made me laugh the tiniest bit. No hurry. With a trace of willingness, I left the car, still clearly tender and scared. Speaking gently and as always, respectfully, he led me into the work site. There were 3 other kids inside already working.
I wiped the tears from my face, punched my time card, walked over to a long brown table, looked at my new peers and sat down to work. We stuffed envelopes for hours. How long was it? I sat across from someone named John. He was funny and sweet. We laughed all afternoon, tears running down our cheeks, the kind of laughter that makes every sad thing fade for a time and happiness seem everlasting. I knew we were friends. Happily resinged to my new life, I was in.
Once school started, each Earn and Learn student took a slip of paper to school every day. After each class, the teacher marked the appropriate box with a 1 or 0. Categories included getting to class on time, doing class work, homework, and participating in class discussions. The more 1’s in a day the longer one could work at the site that afternoon, the bigger one’s paycheck. I liked school so this was fun. Being on time became a game.
Once at the work site, we were divided into stations. These included envelope stuffing, small parts assembly, collating and many other simple repetitive jobs. A short time into the school year I was allowed to work in the office which was more fun to me than being on the work floor. I remember the office as a privilege for those who showed themselves to be reliable and a welcome change of scene.
Earn and Learn was considered a dork program by the general student body at my school. I knew I was seen as defective. I disliked it a bit, but in a way a 14 year old knows things, I knew I was lucky. I remember 8th grade better than any year of school. My closest friends went to two other Evanston middle schools. I was part of a tight knit group of 5 kids from the program. Their names I remember and 4 of us are still in touch. I wish I remembered the names of others I worked and grew with. I see their faces surrounded by plain walls and metal framed windows. I remember their smiles when bonuses were passed out. That’s when we all sat facing front, heads up, listening for our name and amount awarded.
I worked voluntary overtime on weekends putting advertisements on door handles and in the lobbies of 3 flat apartment buildings. Street by street, house by house all day. Mary and Ray drove the bus. We assembled each packet before hand so when the bus stopped and I’d recived my orders, I’d jump off the bus and make sure to put a long plastic bag on every door knob on my route. The work was hard, often tiring, but I usually signed up. Purpose (and extra $) has that effect.
Friday was payday. We were a sight. A line of talkative 7th and 8th graders shuffling on the lobby carpet of a bank, waiting to change white paper into money. Cash in hand we’d stroll into the sunlight. We spent our money on cokes and fries, pizza and music albums. I see 4 us in a booth, merrily conversing, full of antics and laughter. One day I pretended I was going to spray coke from my straw onto…oh, which one was it…Leslie I think, but since she didn’t know I wasn’t going to really, she hit the straw toward John. He received a lovely blessing that afternoon. Or was it the opposite?? Either way, I was amazed that friendship could be so independent…money, time, a common bond and harmless mischeif all under our own watch.
Our group of troubled 30 to 40 7th and 8th graders spent 4 seasons together in circumstances foreign to most of our day time classmates. Back then I knew something special was happening though I had no need to name or meditate on what it was. Years later, grown and floundering again, after 9 months attending the same 12 step meeting where I always faced a large undressed window, I realized the wonder of seeing the same honest faces framed first by autumn’s blazing colors, then by winter’s black skeletal branches and finally by the light of lengthening light in evening and small buds where nothing grew the week before. That was it.
All was not perfect. We did dumb things I won’t print. We weren’t always kind to each other and I was still shy and quiet at school. Home life hadn’t changed. It was worse. Most nights after spending all afternoon with my friends on site, we spent a good portion of the evening on 3 way calls discussing…I have no idea what. I still enjoyed school, now earning top grades. Honestly life was difficult. I constantly worried about the state of the world and whether we’d explode in nuclear war any minute. I constantly worried about the state of my family wondering when the next storm would come and drive us just a little farther apart.
But a seed had been planted. Beneath the soil of my anxiety, a tiny flower began to grow. I took in that wonderful year with Earn and Learn like a fish back in water after flailing in the open air even for a moment. It needs the water to live, but hasn’t a name for the air.