Program spreads after-school safety net

SANDPOINT — The smell of freshly made hamburgers wafted down the stairs, followed in short order by the unmistakable rumble of teen spirit.

On the second floor, a ring of girls and boys sat around a table, immersed in a trivia game. Others were engaged elsewhere in the room — cleaning up the kitchen, having a conversation or watching a video of something or other.

Everywhere there was energy and movement, with conversations tumbling over one another like multiple radio stations broadcasting at the same time. To the uninitiated, all of this might look and sound like the very definition of chaos.

Those who have raised teenagers are able to see it for what it really is — a hyper-focused environment where everything is interesting all the time until it’s not anymore because now it’s boring so the attention shifts to a new direction on the way to another idea completely unrelated to the last one that somehow twists and turns until it leads back to what you were talking about in the first place.

It’s not so much a full circle as it is a fast-paced spiral.

And on a recent weekday afternoon, it was swirling around at top speed inside the Sandpoint Teen Center.

“What’s the name of Paul McCartney’s fashion-designer daughter?” 14-year-old Sara Trautwein asked as she held aloft a game card that bore the answer. It was a team of four boys against two girls and Sara knew the opposition was stumped. After some loud consultation, the boys lunged from their chairs in a mass attempt to seize the card.

Sara scrunched into a ball to protect the answer and, once the wave had passed over, she popped up and brandished the card.

“Stella!” she announced in a loud voice. “Our point.”

There was a collective moan from the boys’ team before the boisterous competition began anew with another question.

“Scattered teen energy is what it’s all about,” said teen center board president Margareta Larson, who led the push to restart the program after it was shut down last year. “They’re loud, they can be rowdy — and they grow on you.”

Located in the Adventist Community Building on the corner of Pine Street and Division, the Sandpoint Teen Center was first opened in 2005 by volunteers from the Seventh-day Adventist Church. According to teen center board member Jim Payne, volunteers from the Adventist Church and, later, the First Christian Church suffered successive bouts of burnout, leaving the after-school program shuttered last fall.

When Larson noticed a group of teens gathered in front of the closed center, she put things in motion to revive the operation. By the first week of October, she and a new crew of volunteers had it going again.

 “Margareta really drove the effort to reopen the center,” Payne said. “She noticed that some kids were hanging around outside the door — like bees returning to the hive — and it tore at her heart.”   

The kids outside those doors weren’t the ones who drive mom’s SUV to Starbucks for an after-school frappucino. They weren’t the joiners or the jocks or the academic stars. According to Larson, they were — and are — “the kids who are falling between the cracks at school.”

“These are different teens,” Payne said. “There’s a group of kids who are not attached. They’re at loose ends — and they’re the ones we serve.”

“When these kids get out of school, there are so many areas they can go that are not good,” said center director Andy L’Heureux. “The No. 1 thing we provide to kids is a safe environment.

“Some of them go home to empty houses until nine or 10 at night,” he added. “If we’re not here for them, who’s going to be?”

The Sandpoint Teen Center was revived by a $1,000 donation from the Community Assistance League, combined with smaller donations earmarked for operational expenses. L’Heureux — a former culinary arts teacher and career chef — is the only paid employee. His skills are put to work every Monday, Wednesday and Thursday afternoon when the center opens at the end of the school day.

“We love the food,” Sara said. “That’s what got me to start coming.”

Cameron Dingman, also 14, keeps coming back because of the friends he’s made.

“I only see these guys when I come here,” he said. “Everybody goes to different schools.”

Since the center reopened, there has been “a core group that grows,” according to Payne.

“Each time, we see one or two new faces,” he said.

“It varies from eight to 20 kids on any given day,” said L’Heureux, who pointed out that interest in the program is starting to build. “Last month, we served 170 kids over four weeks. That’s a pretty big number, but we’d like to see it get even bigger.

“I’d like to see this grow to the point where people realize there are other options besides just hanging out after school,” he added, clarifying that the headcount was tallied by total teen visits, not the number of distinct individuals who attended.

Eight months ago, the adult volunteers structured the center’s activities. But the grown-ups learned quickly that the program was better off when kids had a say in what went on there.

“That’s why we’re adding a teen to the board of directors,” L’Heureux said. “It’s not about us. Ultimately, it’s about the kids and what they want to do.”

Community service has become a regular part of the teens’ after-school experience. When asked what they have been doing in this area, the group sends back a flurry of answers.

“We play with the old people,” one of them said.

Translation: The teens baked goodies for Valentine’s Day and delivered them to the elders living down the block at Valley Vista Care Center. This week, they will visit them again to take part in the facility’s Teen Angel Party as part of Lost in the ‘50s festivities.

“We do graffiti,” a teen responded.

“You mean we take off graffiti,” another corrected.

“Whatever,” the first teen said.

Translation: When there was a vandalism spree in downtown Sandpoint, kids from the teen center jumped to the front lines to remove the paint.

“When we saw the pictures of graffiti at the Healing Garden and Jeff Jones Square, the kids were really upset,” Larson said. “They decided that they wanted to help clean it up.”

The teens also have sewn blankets for the “Bags of Love” distributed in conjunction with the Idaho Meth Project and knitted baby caps for the Kinderhaven Tree. To raise money for center operations, they sell raffle tickets, split firewood and hold on-line used book sales.

One of the greatest benefits the Sandpoint Teen Center has to offer might come in the form of face-to-face social interaction, something that is almost a lost art in an era where texting replaces talking and young people count their cadre of friends by how many of photos appear on a Facebook home page.

By design, the games played at the teen center require more thought than expertise with a game controller and the conversations they carry on rely more on verbal communication than thumb dexterity.

“When kids come here, they’re not texting someone who’s sitting two feet away,” L’Heureux said. “They’re not sitting alone with their earbuds plugged in, tuning out the world. They’re talking to each other; they’re working things out. They’re socializing.”

Justin Rickett, “almost 15,” started spending his afternoons at the teen center after he found out about the place through friends who came in to get after-school help with homework or just have an adult to bounce ideas and problems off of.

“I come here every day,” he said. “We play games, do crafts and cooking and stuff like that. And we play football once in a while.”

“And human ping-pong!” Seth Smith added on a fly-by from one side of the room to another.

Besides an ongoing need for funding, the Sandpoint Teen Center is always on the lookout for volunteers. Larson and Payne were encouraged by the recent involvement of former Denver Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer and his wife, Kollette, in that capacity, hoping it will raise awareness about the program and draw additional volunteers.

“They said that one of the reasons they’re doing it is that they’re going to have kids of their own and wanted to get some practice,” Payne said. “For anyone who wants training on being the parents of teens — man, this is perfect.

“Being plunged into a group of teens takes you way outside your comfort zone,” he added. “But that’s where personal growth happens.”

Larson said that being an adult in the lives of teens who have limited interaction with grown-ups throws a safety net beneath a potentially at-risk population.

“This is a positive act for our teens and our community and our world,” the board president explained. “It’s not that we’re helping them make any choices. It’s more of a bad choice prevention center.”

For information on the Sandpoint Teen Center, call 263-0221 or 265-9648.