A partnership between a special education program and one of the city’s specialized high schools has students learning important life skills — and learning alongside one another. 

In the basement of Staten Island Technical High School, there’s a little cafe where students with special needs are learning jobs skills.

What You Need To Know

Eight students from a special needs program are co-located at Staten Island Tech, a specialized high school serving students who gain entry via the SHSAT exam

The students work at a coffee shop they set up as part of the co-location, to learn life skills

They also attend classes alongside Tech students

“I’m at the cafe at Barks and Beaks. I’m being a cashier this year,”  Matthew D’Oria, 20, a student at P37R, said. “I like to take people’s orders.”

It’s called Barks and Beaks after the mascots of two schools — the bark of a Husky for P37R, a school for students with significant special needs, like autism, and the beak of a seagull, for Staten Island Technical High school, a specialized high school where eight P37R students are co-located.

“We are a District 75 special education program which focuses heavily on building vocational and life skills for our students as they prepare to leave us,” Rob Leavey, a special education teacher at P37R, said. “So this coffee shop is just one of the ways we prepare our students for that next step.”

Students make and serve the food and drinks, and practice their social skills.

“We learned a lot, a lot of things at Barks and Beaks,” Alyssa Jones, 16, also a student at P37R, said. “We made all the coffee and avocado toast.”

“We focus on applied academics in the coffee shop, as well as social skills, as our students learn to take orders, prepare coffee and different recipes of food, and basically just learn to work as part of an amazing, supportive team,” Leavey said.

The students also attend classes, including Staten Island Tech’s weekly Talknology class, which aims to teach all students social skills and prepare them for the workforce.

“Something that Staten Island Tech is doing an amazing job with is focusing on the social development of their students, and they have been amazing enough to include and collaborate us in that journey,” Leavey said.

“We consider them our students. So it’s just been a remarkable co-location. I don’t even like to call it a co-location — they’re our students,” Staten Island Tech Principal Mark Erlenwein said.