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Fairgrounds visit gives local eighth-graders a true reality check
Spin the Wheel of Life. Pick a card, any card. Roll the dice.
Glimpse your future. Leave your past behind. And above all, get a reality check.
That was the mission Monday for nearly 500 eighth-graders from all four Putnam County schools and Eminence who experienced a dose of reality in a Milton Bradley “Game of Life” sort of way at the annual Reality Experience at the Putnam County Fairgrounds.
Students visited about 15 stations to learn about the salaries of jobs in the real world and what a wage earner can afford after necessities like food and putting a roof over his or her family’s heads.
“It was a good lesson for them,” assured Jim Maxwell, one of the longtime organizers of the event over the past 11 years since the Greencastle Kiwanis Club took over in 2006 as the guiding force behind a program begun originally as the Reality Store by the Greencastle Business and Professional Women.
Some of the young peoples’ answers and remarks continue to be priceless, Maxwell suggested.
“They’ll roll the dice and get four kids,” he said, “and you’ll hear them say, ‘I don’t want that many kids.’”
The goal of the Reality Experience, Maxwell said, has been to motivate local eighth-graders to think about their futures, what financial resources might be necessary to meet their lifestyle and the value of education in getting a job that pays well enough to enable such an existence.
The learning process includes the realization that life can throw you a curveball now and again. Young adults often end up raising kids when they’re still bent on raising cain.
Among other things, a field trip to the Reality Experience allows students to see how much money it takes to run a household, Cloverdale Middle School teacher Megan Schroeder noted.
“I feel it gives them a better perspective on the value of a dollar, and hopefully encourages them to appreciate how hard their parents work to provide the necessitates,” she said. “Our amazing counselor, Kathleen Glaser, takes the time to categorize the professions they may choose based on current grades, which can be an eye-opener for students who think grades don’t matter.
“Overall,” Schroeder added, “I feel the Reality Store is one of the most educational and ‘real-world’ experiences a student at this age could have. Plus, it allows kids to better understand the comment, ‘We can’t afford that right now.’”
Prior to the fairgrounds experience, students work with school counselors and teachers on career planning and such aspects of adult life as balancing a checkbook.
Life, of course, isn’t quite as simple as the Reality Experience might portray it in a one-hour visit to the fairgrounds. But the object lesson involved goes a long way toward understanding the harsh reality of facing tight household budgets, rising housing and utility costs, insurance needs, future goals and the myriad obstacles in their path.
Besides the Kiwanis Club, support came from the local Lions and Rotary clubs, Kappa Delta Phi philanthropic sorority, League of Women Voters, Putnam County Foundation and Putnam County Hospital, along with numerous local real estate, insurance, banking and justice system representatives. The Lions Club, for example, fed the students lunch.
Putting food on the table is one issue many of the students encountered, facing the predicament of not having a much money left after paying bills, funding education and insurance.
By the time most of eighth-graders work their way around to the food and housing table, they have no money, having succumbed to the lure of a new car or truck, coupled with the necessity of insuring and maintaining a vehicle. That can mean little or no dough left to spend on food and clothing, let alone furniture and appliances.
Such difficulty wasn’t lost on the students.
A group of North Putnam eighth-graders was lunching on pizza and hotdogs when one of the girls at the table asked the others, “Did you get a vacation?”
“Man,” the only boy in the group sighed, “I didn’t have any money left for one.”
Yes, welcome to the game of life.