Dear Larry:
 
While not quite the same experience, for a number of years the Baltimore
Center for Urban Archaeology used "Blue Chip-In" inner city high school
youth during the summer on excavation and lab work.  My comments here
apply mainly to having the kids actually do lab work. The first piece of
advice I can offer you is to make sure you have a high
"teacher-to-child" ratio.  One "supervisor" could handle effectively 7
of these kids; more than that got unwieldly.  The second piece of advice
I would offer is that these kids learned best by example - when they saw
archaeologists doing the same tasks that they were being asked to do,
and when the supervisor set the pace.  They were, as a group, very
sensitive about be used as "cheap labor", and we were careful to never
ask any of them to do something we did do ourselves.  We also had to
teach rudimentary skills such as writing and spelling to some of these
kids.
 
While sometimes we went crazy, in all it was some of the best experience
I had with "non-professionals"; we hired some kids after the program to
continue with the lab work.  One of them went on to a two year college
and now works in the office for the Baltimore City Life Museums.
 
Best of luck with your program.
 
Carmen Weber Creamer