Eagle Brewing will be rolling through the halls of Brown County High School this month after the Essential Skills class received a $500 grant to start a student-run coffee cart service.
The $500 MAC grant is from McDonald’s of greater Indiana and southwest Michigan, which award grants to high schools each school year to help support classroom curriculum.
The grants were distributed to 50 teachers in the Indiana and southwest Michigan regions.
Grants were awarded to classrooms working to “embody the core educational values of McDonald’s,” which include business or economics, computer skills, culinary, entrepreneurship, hospitality management, personal finance or online learning experiences, according to McDonald’s.
Essential Skills teacher Barb Kelp said the money will be used to run the coffee cart at the high school where drinks and snacks will be offered to students and staff. The cart will go door to door selling the items.
The students will manage all aspects of the cart with direct support from staff as they teach them employability skills, Kelp said.
Duties will include creating a Google Form survey to ask people what they want the cart to offer, making start-up purchases, managing money and budgets, creating the pricing, ensuring food and beverage safety, handling the customer service, coordinating money deposits with the bookkeeper to pay bills and more.
“The students will learn all aspects of the management of this cart in a hands-on authentic way. Real life preparation for adult living all through the management of the coffee cart,” Kelp said.
Students will serve up the treats and customers will, in turn, provide the students with opportunities to learn essential skills.
Along with being a way to learn important skills, Kelp said the class wanted to offer the coffee cart because it will be fun.
“We like to have fun as much as possible and believe this is a great way to add some fun into our time at school. We think it will be fun for us and for those we serve. We are looking forward to greeting students and staff as we offer drinks and snacks to them,” she said.
Kelp, the Essential Skills students and the classroom paraprofessionals all gathered in the high school’s auditorium on Oct. 21 to officially receive the grant check from the owner of the Nashville McDonald’s Michael Stieglitz in front of fellow students and staff.
“This is phenomenal,” Stieglitz said of the coffee cart business.
Stieglitz also presented the class with a large McDonald’s thank you card.
The students will also train with a chef from the high school C4 program to make the snacks and drinks.
“As a teacher, I need to make sure all the fun we are having is connected to learning opportunities. Eagle Brewing will provide many valuable learning opportunities to our students,” Kelp said.
While serving up smiles with the coffee and snacks, Kelp said the students will strengthen the skills they will need when they transition out of high school into the “job of their dreams,” which is the goal of the Essential Skills program, Kelp said.
“We are building skills that can be carried over to any job opportunity,” she said.
The Essential Skills classroom teaches the Indiana Department of Education’s employability skills that were created in partnership with Indiana Workforce Development and Indiana Office of Work Based Learning.
Those 18 skills include being self-disciplined, time management and organization, adaptability, initiative, problem solving, attention to detail and effective communication.
The goal was to have the cart rolling by second trimester, which began Nov. 8. The Essential Skills class was planning and purchasing supplies on Nov. 8.
Once those supplies arrive the cart will start moving down the halls delivering smiles and fun.
