Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship for The Winooski News
WINOOSKI — Evelyn Monje attended Thrive after-school when she was little. Now as program director, she said it’s been a gift to evolve the program with her staff and students.
Thrive is a state-licensed childcare and enrichment program at JFK Elementary School in partnership with the city of Winooski and the Winooski School District.
Q. What specifically led you to want to work in a career with children?
A. It’s sort of a long and winding road.
I actually grew up here in Winooski and went to Thrive when I was a little kid and really enjoyed it. So there’s that piece of my origin connection: I’m from here, engaged in Thrive as a child and was enrolled in the program.
On the flip side, for a really long time I wanted to be a veterinarian. Then I got my first summer job at a summer camp, and that really changed my life.
The speed and the pace and the constant questions really caused me to fall in love with this work and shift my career goals.
Q. What steps did you take in your career that eventually led you to become the Thrive program director?
A. I did my undergrad at UVM, which is an incredible program. I built a really strong community and fell even more in love with not only what it is to be in education and teach youth, but what it is to really look at community.
What is the root of things that are hard in the day-to-day? How do you address those sort of behind the scenes?
I then got my master’s in social work at Simmons University and really focused more on diagnosing and therapy. That has really lent itself to this work: not only looking at who’s sitting across from me and having skills in that, but also what is the greater picture?
If you are existing as a tiny young person with these things going on with you and your body, what does it mean about your environment? What does it mean that when you arrive, you know that you’ve got trusted adults who are here for you?
Q. Growing up in Winooski, do you think there are any important experiences or perspectives you have gained that aid you in running the Thrive after-school program?
A. I felt really grateful to have Thrive as childcare when I was a kid because my mom has always worked full-time and needed somewhere for me to be that was low-cost.
I had somewhere that I had trusted adults who cared about me, and somewhere that I was going to have fun and make friends. What a gifted opportunity to come full circle and offer that to my own community.
Q. Did you always plan on coming back to Winooski after college?
A. I was sort of torn. When I was in undergrad, I was always like, “Vermont is really the place for me. This is so exciting. This is where I always want to be.” Then I spent my year in Boston at Simmons University and really fell in love with being in the city.
But there is something about this program and these kiddos.
Q. What made you want to work closely within the community you grew up in?
A. Winooski is the only global majority representing school district in the state of Vermont. It is incredibly diverse in terms of race and background and ethnicity and sexual orientation and gender and all of these pieces of who you are.
I think Winooski is really trailblazing what it means to center community, even when you come from so many different walks of life.
I think being able to offer myself as someone who’s young and a person of color and has been enrolled in this program — there’s something really sweet about seeing someone who represents you.
Q. Winooski is such a diverse place — what do you consider to be the challenges and benefits of that?
A. I think that diversity is the magic that creates progress.
There are times when it’s tricky when you all come from different perspectives culturally on how to raise kids or how to be around kids.
So it’s been really an honor to support my staff in finding the skills, time, capacity and care to sit down and be like, “This was hard for me,” or, “I would have done it really differently,” or, “I had never thought of that.”
Every day we come back committed to being better and committed to offering better and to lean into the discomfort to benefit the children. Often in workplaces, we lean against differing opinions, and we actually do the reverse and lean into them.
Q. What are the main goals of the Thrive after-school program? How do you hope it will evolve?
A. Part of the core values that I know Thrive has, and that we’re working towards, is being highly accessible.
And so, thinking about, what are the ways in which we expand our hours so that people can drop off earlier and pick up later? What are the possibilities of having vacation camps when your kid is out of school but you have to work? How can we break down those barriers and get people enrolled in subsidies, which is our financial aid through the state?
Q. Working closely with children, is there anything over the years that you have learned through the eyes of the kids you are surrounded by?
A. Every day. That is truly the magic of why I chose to work with kids.
My first summer camp job was working at Bread and Butter Farm in Shelburne, and I remember the owner of the farm. Her name is Corie. She’s incredible.
She had sat us all down as a staff team and was talking about how to speak to children. One of the things she was reflecting on was how it is belittling to speak to them in a condescending manner, often because they are full people and full human beings.
They’re just small and growing, and that really shifted the way I think about youth. Children are really curious for a reason, and they learn by watching what we do and how we speak.
What an honor it is to sit in this position of adults and to constantly be learning from kids. They always impress you to some degree. I think inherently, the biggest lesson is that kids have all the answers.
I think that we do a lot of unlearning as we get older, and then you learn it all over again, but that kids are inherently kind and very good.
Q. What do you find to be the most fulfilling part of your job?
A. I really enjoy my job. I feel really lucky to enjoy it so deeply. I’m pulled between the magic of my work with youth and the magic of my work with my adult staff team.
I’ve been working with youth since I was 13, so I think it’s a very familiar love, like my cup is filled.
This is my first time in this position, watching adults do something very similar to youth: learning a new skill, falling in love with it and coming back every day to try. What we were given as children is never enough. It’s never enough for anybody. All children deserve more.
And I’ve started to hear from staff who are going home and falling asleep, thinking, “What am I going to do tomorrow? You know, this didn’t quite work today and I want to try something different.”
Who’s got a staff team like that? Like, what a gift.