The perfect summer job

Dressed in uniform red T-shirts, Tajeria Beacham was selling tickets while Deidra Williams loaded sodas into a cooler in a small shed right next to a handful of amusement park rides at Iowa City's Lower City Park on Thursday.

Just two kids working summer jobs, but actually part of a pretty perfect system.

Both women, 18 and about to be sophomores at the University of Northern Iowa, are FasTrac alums - the City High group that was shuttered at the end of the 2010 school year.

FasTrac is thriving outside school walls. This summer, the group won a contract to operate the rides at City Park - a self-funding way to put more than a dozen kids to work for the first time, to help build relationships in the community and provide a valuable service.

“A lot of kids want to get paid,” FasTrac founder Henri Harper told me when we talked about the program. But like everything with FasTrac, there are larger lessons to learn - and not just for the kids.

Alyssa Whiteaker, 23, who just graduated from the University of Iowa School of Social Work, oversees the whole operation with the help of supervisors like Tajeria and Deidra. They make the rules: Show up on time, be positive, friendly and customer-focused - skills the FasTrac kids can market to other employers. Already, a few have moved on - getting other jobs at Aeropostale, McDonalds, at a local day care center.

The program is open to all, but most FasTrac members are black. Most have come to Iowa City from somewhere else - mainly impoverished south Chicago neighborhoods.

“Everything's running smoothly,” Tajeria told me. There have been a few odd incidents - like the woman who lost her wallet and started accusing staff - but they've been far outweighed by compliments from families who frequent the park. “You have to prove people wrong by your actions,” Deidra said. And so they do.

These kids are keenly aware they're ambassadors of a sort in a town that's steeped in swirling myth about “those people from Chicago.”

That's part of how FasTrac got started in the first place - to change people's perceptions and support peers who were doing the right thing.

“Intelligence is not skin deep,” Deidra told me. “We are more than just our skin color.”

“But,” she adds diplomatically, “if they don't have firsthand experience, how would they know?”

And so the lessons continue: One carousel ride at a time.

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