To the editor:

Last week, the sixth-graders at Hillcrest School opened an Italian restaurant for a day. We put lots of effort into this project. We wrote résumés and letters of recommendation and completed applications for our jobs. Experienced adults (whom we’d never met until our interview) interviewed us for jobs ranging from wait staff to maître d’ to cook. Finally, we handmade pasta and served over 150 people with reservations at our establishments.

From this project, we learned to prepare for our future to get the jobs we want. We realize now that getting a job is harder than we thought. We never realized that interviewing took practice or that there was so much writing involved!

Even though we worked hard, our restaurants could not have succeeded without donations from a number of area businesses. We would like to thank and recognize our sponsors who generously offered items including ingredients, bowls, paper goods and so on. These businesses all believed in us kids enough to help out. In return for their generosity, we plan to use all our profits to benefit next year’s sixth-graders. The money we earned will pay for a special field trip that many students couldn’t otherwise afford. Thank you again, donors!