To learn real life lessons, these students turned from textbooks to summer jobs as indie booksellers

None of the three young summer employees working at Harriett’s Bookshop has changed their mind.

As their summer employment program ends, Imani Wilson, 14, is still hoping to be a professional volleyball player, although at only 5-foot-2 she realizes she may have to consider other options.

Serenity Glenn, 15, had considered a career in law and is now seriously looking at being a radiology technician because of her newfound love of biology. And Elijah Slayton, 20, is going to continue his computer science studies at Community College of Philadelphia.

While they haven’t decided to pivot to selling books, what the trio learned about being an independent bookseller and an entrepreneur while working this summer at Harriett’s Bookshop in Fishtown has provided unforgettable life lessons, regardless of their future career choices.

“I think the big wins one gets is confidence, self-awareness, social awareness, self management, and social management,” Harriett’s Bookshop owner Jeannine A. Cook said, explaining the value of summer jobs for young people.

In turn, the three students agreed that one of their most potent lessons was discovering the role bookstores can play in turning customers into a community. “I have never had a bad [customer] interaction,” Glenn said.

» READ MORE: Harriett’s Bookshop owner Jeannine A. Cook purchases her Fishtown building

The students’ time at Harriett’s is an example of Cook’s and the city’s belief that a summer job is a critical stop on the school-to-career pathway.

According to research, summer employment provides youth with an opportunity to connect to employers while developing a work history and soft skills. In turn, this increases the money they have, decreases criminal activity, and improves academic outcomes.

This is the first year of operation for the city’s Career Connected Learning PHL (C2L-PHL) program, which gives 8,000 young people, ages 12 to 24, a summer job, real-world experience, and a paycheck. The program is a collaboration between the city, the School District of Philadelphia, and Philadelphia Works and is managed by JEVS Human Services. For almost 25 years, the citywide summer youth program had been run by Philadelphia Youth Network (PYN), but the nonprofit is now a service provider for C2L-PHL and placed the three students at Harriett’s Bookshop.

The problem is that about 30,000 city youth, ages 16 to 24, still spend the summer in need of employment and its benefits.

» READ MORE: Give Philly kids a job. It will save money in the long run.

Cook, who once taught at alternative schools, said she has provided youth employment opportunities since she opened her shop in 2020 because she became aware of the barriers many young people face with such issues as homelessness and domestic violence. “It helps them to have money in their pocket and to have gotten it the right way,” Cook said.

When the students are paid through the program, it helps Cook. “The value is to be able to offset the cost of having them work,” Cook said. In turn, the work creates new opportunities for the young workforce.

“I like the networking,” said Glenn, who is going into 11th grade at Girard College. Glenn said that people who come to bookshops are less hurried and more willing to engage in conversations with other customers and the staff. The result, Glenn explained, was her ability to make interesting connections, such as the woman who worked at a college and told her to contact her for help.

For Slayton, it was the Rutgers University professor of video game design he met who now has him thinking of how to combine his love of art and computer science.

Probably the most significant takeaway for the group is the newfound importance they place on reading for pleasure.

The 2023 Scholastic Kids & Family Reading Report showed that reading enjoyment plummets as kids age, from a high of 70% for children ages 6 to 8 to only 46% among those ages 12 to 17. The survey also found that only 15% of 15- to 17-year-olds are frequent readers, compared with 46% of 6- to 8-year-olds.

Earlier in the summer, Cook handed Slayton a copy of The Autobiography of Malcom X and suggested he read the tome by Alex Haley. It is changing his perception of Malcolm X.

“I was surprised. His life up to becoming prominent was a very unauthorized life. I’m reading all the gritty details,” Slayton said of Malcolm Little’s life before his conversion to Islam while incarcerated. “I’m reading it off and on. I read it yesterday, and his life is still raveling.”

When Wilson spied a customer’s order for The Gift of Rejection and read the back cover, she decided that she finally found something that would help her better handle rejection.

As part of their summer duties, the three had to read about and develop an exhibit on Judge Harvey N. Schmidt, one the the city’s most accomplished lawyers and judges who died at 87 in 2002. The exhibit would include books from the judge’s personal library from his Wynnefield home, where his widow still lives.

According to Harvey Schmidt Jr., the judge’s grandson and Cook’s life partner, the exhibit came from a conversation with Cook about the importance of recalling the city’s own African American hidden figures who have become lost to history.

“He was very influential. Learning about him sheds a bigger light on a local hero and his impact,” Slayton said. “It just makes us more aware.”

Cook said expanding the world of possibilities is the ultimate power of a summer job and more important than her employees becoming bookshop owners.

“It doesn’t make any difference what we are doing to change the world,” Cook said.