A partnership between a special education program and one of the city\u2019s specialized high schools has students learning important life skills \u2014 and learning alongside one another.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the basement of Staten Island Technical High School, there\u2019s a little cafe where students with special needs are learning jobs skills.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
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
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The students work at a coffee shop they set up as part of the co-location, to learn life skills
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They also attend classes alongside Tech students<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m at the cafe at Barks and Beaks. I\u2019m being a cashier this year,\u201d\u00a0 Matthew D\u2019Oria, 20, a student at P37R, said. \u201cI like to take people\u2019s orders.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s called Barks and Beaks after the mascots of two schools \u2014 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d Rob Leavey, a special education teacher at P37R, said. \u201cSo this coffee shop is just one of the ways we prepare our students for that next step.\u201d<\/p>\n
Students make and serve the food and drinks, and practice their social skills.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe learned a lot, a lot of things at Barks and Beaks,\u201d Alyssa Jones, 16, also a student at P37R, said. \u201cWe made all the coffee and avocado toast.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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,\u201d Leavey said.<\/p>\n
The students also attend classes, including Staten Island Tech\u2019s weekly Talknology class, which aims to teach all students social skills and prepare them for the workforce.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomething 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,\u201d Leavey said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe consider them our students. So it’s just been a remarkable co-location. I don’t even like to call it a co-location \u2014 they\u2019re our students,\u201d Staten Island Tech Principal Mark Erlenwein said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A partnership between a special education program and one of the city\u2019s specialized high schools has students learning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37737,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[203,25,67,5215,9,24,63,134,136,135,27,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-37736","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-app-education","9":"tag-app-top-stories","10":"tag-education","11":"tag-jillian-jorgensen","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-staten-island","16":"tag-staten-island-headlines","17":"tag-staten-island-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37736\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}