Spring Break

Last year, it was a royal mistake. The students in Learning Center (the alternative school for the Leaders-in-Training) weren't performing well academically, and their teacher decided that everyone needed a break. We LIT department folks found out a day or two before school was canceled for the entire week. It was like a school district calling a whole week of snow days and informing parents on Sunday. Out of our desperation to occupy the kids, our own version of spring break was invented.

Some mistakes redeem into something better that we could have imagined to begin with. So this year, when a different school teacher decided that she needed to go home for two weeks in May, we were ready. The Learning Center students go to school year-round, anyway, so it's not a problem to call off school and give them other projects for a week. We like to come up with a combination of service projects and field trips--something out of the ordinary to ease the pressure of leaders and LITs being together all day. It also ends up being a not-so-sneaky way to encourage the LITs to be thankful for school. (The leaders are already thankful for school.)

This year's spring break, we did some of the same things as last year: picked up trash in our neighborhood, visited nursing homes, and volunteered at the Good News Mission Youth Center. We do those things during EQUIP with just the leaders, but it's a treat to take the leaders back with their LITs and to see how the LITs respond to the same new situations that confronted their leaders earlier. Danielle F. interacted well with the folks at the nursing home. Chris and James held a violin and banjo concert for the residents. Danielle E. laughed at me for littering my neighborhood map on the sidewalk repeatedly as I tried to pick up trash. Victoria was a bit intimidated by the kids at the mission. "Am I allowed to talk to them?" she asked me. Of course she was allowed to talk to them, but she had a hard time finding things to say. It's one thing to hang out with kids at school, and it's another thing to try to be an example to a group of kids on a playground.

Our field trips included an outing to Holliday Park and time to spend at a couple of historical museums in downtown Indy. The crowning event was a trip to the Indianapolis Speedway, home of the Indy 500. Since it was May, in addition to looking around the museum, we got to watch several of the cars practicing for the upcoming race. After seven years of working in Indianapolis, it was about time for me to learn that the Indy 500 isn't a NASCAR race and that the 500 refers to the number of times the cars careen around the track.

Spring break, it seems, was educational for us all.