On Wednesday, April 16, Chesterton High School hosted the Duneland Chamber of Commerce' eighth Reality Store. The Reality store has been taking place for more than 20 years, changing with the times, and has morphed into what it is now: exemplary of the active partnership between the Duneland Chamber of Commerce and the Duneland School system. This year, eighth graders came not only from Chesterton Middle School, but also St. Pat’s and the Discovery School. More than 120 community members volunteered their time for the Reality Store.
The purpose of the Reality Store is to bring students a greater understanding of the challenges and realities along life’s road. It looked like a lot of fun for the students, as quite a few came dressed professionally and we enthusiastic about their “roles” as adults.
Before arriving, each student was assigned a career – often one that relates to their interests – and completed a worksheet to determine their income. When they arrived, each drew a ping-pong ball with a number on it to determine the number of children. Then each student went from station to station to complete a number of tasks adults are probably too familiar with, but adolescents have little grasp on, including paying taxes, loans, and for food, insurance and transportation.
After these choice-oriented stations came another ping-pong ball draw, this time to determine other bumps in the road and, though it was heard that there was a 10 percent chance of something good (like an inheritance coming), it was often traffic tickets and other things. Dependent upon the ping-pong outcome, some stations had to be revisited and some new ones needed to be. For example, if a student ran out of money, he or she then had to go to the bankruptcy station. A reward table was also present.
At each station along the way, community members sat with paperwork, ready to walk students through the processes at the table. What made the stations so interesting was that the people behind the tables were, oftentimes, professionally involved in the field of their station.
“It teaches the kids, early on, that everything costs money. You have to get a job in order to get these things paid for. Right now, ‘Mom and Dad’ take care of them and pay for them. It kind of brings it around for them to realize that everything comes into play,” said Lana Reiser of Anton Insurance, who volunteered at the insurance station for the second time this year.
Many of the volunteers on hand are also members of the Duneland Chamber of Commerce and were looking forward to getting to know the young people of our community.
“I’ve only been here about a year and a half, so I’m not too familiar with the community. What I’m trying to do is get out there and get in touch with the people. I work with the Chamber of Commerce and I’m a member there. I’m just trying to get to know my neighbors!” said Bruce Levesque, who is new to the area and runs his own business as a Problem Analyst. During the Reality Store, he aimed to give the kids a “reality check” about transportation costs.
Relationships matter so much in our community. The respect and support exchanged between the Duneland Chamber and Schools was evident throughout the event. Both Maura Durham, President of the Chamber, and Laura Herrod, Chesterton Middle School Counselor, were on hand to talk about the importance of the Reality Store.
“We’ve actually talked to the teachers after the fact. They’ve said that they’ve actually seen an impact in how these kids go about getting better grades so they can get a better career at the Reality Store. I think it’s great that it actually translates into real life scenarios for them. If we have better students going out of our school system, going on, doing better things, keeping them in the area is going to mean better growth for our communities and better professionals in our area,” Durham said.
“This event is important to our students to experience so they have a better understanding of how important education is and the fact that greater education is usually connected to greater opportunity and also greater earnings. I think it’s great for our students to meet our community workers. I think it’s great for the volunteers – who work in many of these occupations – to come and meet students and see where they’re at. I think it also reinforces lessons learned in the classroom about how important education is and to help our students avoid the pitfalls of pregnancy and drug abuse and those kinds of things," Herrod added.
So many smiling visitors entered Chesterton High School and a number of eighth grade students benefited from their interactions with today’s leaders. This experience will hopefully help them make better “four-year plans” for their high school years and beyond. Some of the lessons of life are hard to learn, but now, at least, these students are lucky to have this chance to learn about them before real life hits.