For three days each year during the Ohio State University event, eighth-graders from London Middle School walk the outdoor grounds each afternoon after classes, picking up trash and collecting it from attendees and booths.

On the Saturday after the event is packed away for another autumn, they come back for a final clean-up of the leftover litter.

“After they have teardown, it’s really trashy,” said Judy Stromquist, a local parent whose daughter, Rachel, 13, was one of this year’s approximately 40 workers (she said the entire class numbers more than 150). Her son, who just graduated high school, also cleaned the grounds when he was that age.

“Volunteer” isn’t really an accurate term for these kids, since they are being paid by OSU to do the work. It’s just that instead of taking their earnings to the movies or the mall, they’re putting it toward the annual four-day eighth-grade class trip to Washington, D.C., this November.

Justin Emrich, the language arts and reading teacher and wrestling coach, took over the trip project not long ago from its longtime faculty sponsor, whom he said originated it in the 1970s or 1980s. He explained the entire class is eligible for the trip as long as they adhere to a contract they sign at the end of their seventh-grade year – not to get suspensions, for example – and their parents can pay a $100 deposit for each child.

The entire trip costs $470 per student, which includes meals and lodging. Emrich explained the students work fundraisers, such as the FSR, to raise the other $370.

When a student labors, however, they are doing it for themselves – he maintains individual accounts for each to keep track of the cash they raise. If a student wants to go on the trip and doesn’t participate in any fundraisers, and if there aren’t enough community donations to cover their remaining $370, their parents are responsible for that balance. Emrich added the school does try to solicit donations to help students from lower-income families go, too.

Of the FSR, he said, “(OSU does) pay us a good chunk of change. They pay the kids about $8 to $10 an hour.” He said the university disburses a lump sum and it is divided among students based on total hours worked.

Many schools take students to D.C. for class trips, Emrich said, but he believes few demand any more of them than to have fun. “We actually send our kids with a notebook full of work,” he explained. If they go to the Smithsonian, they can’t simply run through the buildings or casually read the placards. “We try to make it more of a learning experience than other schools might.”

“Basically, we’re given a folder and a clipboard,” added Kasey King, 13. Classmate Jasmine Thompson, also 13, said when the students return they have to each create a journal about what they’ve learned. Students who don’t go on the trip also have to complete a project back at school, based on research.

For the short time he’s been the sponsor, Emrich has seen changes in the students, thanks to the trip. For one, in the months before November, they try to behave better so they’ll get to go. Then, there’s taking responsibility for raising part of their own passage. When they return, he said, “They do seem more mature. You can have a conversation with them” about the things they’ve experienced. Emrich said only about 15 percent of the students come from a farm background, but that in other, more rural, area schools that percentage is higher. As for the four students working last Tuesday afternoon under the chaperon of Stromquist, she said, “This group here’s all city girls.”

This farm news was published in the Sept. 26, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.