Okay, maybe I'm a bit biased. I work at REPLAY and love it here. We have some of the most challenging 7th and 8th grade boys in placement and most of them love it here as well. So what's our story?

We are a collaborative placement for boys who have been found delinquent by the courts and have an active case with a delinquency social worker AND who are having difficulty in their regular classroom setting. We have a teacher, Beth Gentilli, who is a Madison Schools employee. The other two staff, a social worker (me) and a program leader, are both employed by Dane County Human Services.

We are located in the Neighborhood Intervention Program building on the "south side" but are probably relocating next fall to a building that is in Madison's more northern reaches. As a staff we have worked together for 3 years.

The boys come to us with multiple issues. Most have unresolved anger and aggression is an identified issue by their home school. Many have ADHD and are untreated. Lots of our boys come from homes that are "chaotic" in one way or another. Academically, most of our boys come with some serious deficits in one or more areas but not all of our kids are IEP recipients.

Programming in the four main academic areas is individualized and flexible. We don't have art, gym, choir or even computers for the boys. We don't have any girls!! What we do offer is a really great set of field trips for our guys!

Our staff delights in taking our boys "outside of their comfort zone". Many of our boys know little beyond their neighborhoods, basketball, fast food and "bootlegged" videos so we make an effort in providing new experiences for each and every one of them.

Our field trips include quick things like bowling or a movie. We go to performances at the Overture Center and baseball games at the Brewers Stadium. We have gone to a corn maze and on the ferry across the Wisconsin River on our way to Devil's Lake. We have seen the fish hatchery, the GM truck factory and the wastewater refinery. We have traveled to Chicago on the train and visited the Museum of Science and Industry, the Shedd Aquarium and the Sears Tower. We have formed a close relationship with Carla Hacker via the school forest and the ropes course. We have been lucky enough to go caving with her as well. We enjoy all these adventures but the one that we look forward to with greatest anticipation each semester is our trip to Governor Dodge State Park to camp with our boys.

We pull out all the stops for our camping trip! It is RUSTIC and lonely where we go, several miles from our group campsite to the road. The boys hike and fish and gather wood for campfires. We teach them to put up tents and how to roll up sleeping bags. They cook over the fire and eat what they make because that is all there is. There are no phones, no "Walkman", and no flush toilets. It is here, where the coyotes howl in the night wind, that the boys are really moved out of their comfort zone and into a place of self-discovery. The boys look at the stars in the sky and walk in the dark. They freak out at the sounds in the woods or the fact that staff leaves them to go alone to the outhouse.

They yell, they get silly and they act all tough but the best thing of all is when they discover they can do things they were afraid of; in a place they had no idea existed. This place is the center of the REPLAY universe and is why we all love it here.