In every job, you need to communicate effectively, work with others and handle money. In this case, students are being taught how life would be in a job for students with special needs, for when they graduate. Every Thursday from 8:45 to 10 p.m. the special education students work a coffee cart outside of the counseling office to sell coffee to staff on campus and learn better functional skills.
The program was created by Courtney Coffin and Nicole McGirr with the help of the principal in 2022, Pilar Vargas, and donations from Nespresso to start them off. With that the special education students are learning how to do tasks that a person without special needs may find easy, their teacher helps them go through the steps to make sure they do it correctly. Their teacher Maria Nielson has menus showing them the ingredients each order needs which the students will use and follow. The money they get from their program helps them get more products for their cart, and it is used when the students do other activities like going to eat or on field trips.
“It was a little challenging to get the ins and outs and even to work with the students but now that I have been running it for the past three to four months it is easier,” Education Specialist, Maria Nielson, said.
The students who require extra assistance are learning life skills they may use in the future. In many cases when working in a place like a coffee shop you have to multitask. Now they may not be fully confident in multitasking but they are following steps to complete a full task. The way they work is each student has a role in which they all take turns making coffee. The students learn to create sentences on speech-generating devices to help them deliver the coffee to the staff. The students as well are also learning how to be independent. Some like to work by themselves in making the coffee although they use assistance from their aids.
“I had to multitask and learn to communicate with people. Multitasking was pretty easy for me but learning to communicate with people was harder, some people were rude, sometimes even called me names but I had to learn to let it go and be professional” Federico Glavan, 12, said.
Most people find working a thing they need to make a living, they don’t find much excitement in it but not for these students. The special needs students find excitement in it as they are doing an activity while making money. Most of the students started nervous but excited then they were just excited as it became a routine. The coffee cart is only open to staff but the aid Mo Fegan said “it would be cool if the cart could be open to all because I know the students would buy some,” when taking a look around students all over campus show up with their cups of coffee.
“I was excited I learned to make coffee and it’s fun, I like to make coffee,” Victor Vazquez, 11, said.
