Teenagers are sweeping Union City clean. Anyone passing the city’s schools or municipal buildings can see a crew of high school students doing maintenance. It’s not cruel and unusual punishment – it’s SWEEP, one of many Union City summer programs offered to high school students this year. Hundreds of students are involved in SWEEP (Summer Work Educational Experience Program) as well as other programs for city teens, like BCE (Business Community and Education Applications of Technology), a technology program, and Mathnet, a teaching program. Through these programs, which have been funded by the Board of Education and by private foundation grants, some students have been able to earn as much as $10 an hour, almost twice the minimum wage. And they have received the training to someday earn more. Clean SWEEP Through SWEEP, students are assigned to a number of different jobs including building, maintenance, clerical work, and media. In the morning, each group of students reports to a classroom for two hours of employee ability skills or training for their specific job. At 10:15 a.m. the students are sent out to their job sites all through the city. Some work at a local public school, child care center or library, while others might be employed at the Edison Recreation Center, the Department of Public Works, City Hall, or the Board of Education. One of the branches of the program, media, requires its students to go out and photograph other SWEEP students hard at work. They then develop and print all of the photos themselves in Union Hill’s dark room. At the end of the program they compile all of the pictures and hang posters at each work site. “SWEEP is not only something to do for the summer, but it gives me the experience I need for a job,” said Carlos Ventura, an entering senior at Union Hill High School who has been in the media branch of the program for the past two years. “We get to meet new people, and it’s fun to learn how to use sophisticated equipment,” said Ventura’s classmate, Kathyria Rojas. The students aren’t the only ones enjoying the program. Don McCoy, their teacher, said, “This is great. The kids are really motivated. They all want to be here, and they get paid for it.” Each student participating in the program receives $5.15 an hour. They applied for the jobs through guidance counselors, who either made them aware of the program or recommended them for it. Not every student who applied to SWEEP was hired because the jobs filled up fast, but many students were put on a waiting list. Internet use Not only are high school students taking over the city; they’re also taking over the Internet. Another one of Union City’s successful summer programs is BCE, which stands for Business Community and Education Applications of Technology. In this program, there are two roles filled by students. Most are taking Internet classes for credit, and the rest are teaching the classes and getting paid for it. Thirty-eight students are receiving high school credit for the classes, and eight interns from Emerson and Union Hill are getting paid $10 an hour to teach them. Each teaching intern lectures the class about the topic or program in which he is most proficient. BCE focuses on HTML, which is the Hyper Text Mark-up Language used to make web pages. The students also learn programs such as FLASH and PhotoShop to create images for the web pages. The city is benefiting from the program as well: the web sites that the students are creating are for their schools and for local businesses. The interns in this program are given a unique experience to be put in the shoes of the teacher. “It’s an odd feeling when you’re on the other side of the classroom and the students are counting on you to explain the lesson,” said Mahdi Hedhli, an intern who just graduated from Emerson High School and will attend Rutgers University in the fall. Former classmate Oscar Negroni, who will attend NYU, added, “It’s a learning experience for us. We learn how to get the students’ attention and how to interact with them. I can appreciate teachers more now.” Union Hill sophomore-to-be Rina Shah, one of the advanced BCE students, said, “This learning opportunity will help me find a better job in the future. It’s a lot of fun once you know what you’re doing.” Only one BCE and SWEEP are only two of the many opportunities open to Union City high school students this summer. There were many more internships available in technology, humanities, science, and business (see sidebar), some of them funded by the Union City Board of Education. Fred Carrigg, the director of academic programs for the Union City Board of Education, said the programs are worthwhile. “The UCBOE believes that these programs give our students an additional edge when competing with more affluent students from the suburbs,” he said. Other summer programs include: • Humanities Internships – Students can get credit or pay for academic summer programs at universities including Columbia, Harvard, Fordham, and Rutgers. •ADELANTE at Kean University – The only college-level bilingual program in New Jersey. The students of ADELANTE learn English through photography and earn three credits in independent research from Kean University. •Science Internships and Research Programs – Students go out to various local colleges such as Rutgers, NJIT, or Stevens, and work with college professors as their mentors. •CBE/Office Simulation Program – Students are paid to take on clerical work around Union City and sharpen their office skills. •Curriculum Interns – Students get paid to assist high school teachers that are working on the curriculum for the next school year in writing and revising. •Mathnet – 7th and 8th grade students explore algebra or geometry through technology, with high school interns as their guides, so that they may be advanced when they reach the real classes in the next school year.
Working up a sweat; For some teens, school’s not out for summer
