RAM BREWS

A new coffee shop is open in Glenwood.

And they deliver.

The Ram Brew Coffee Shop in Glenwood Community High School offers coffee delivery to teachers right to their classroom at the school. The shop is staffed by special education students who learn valuable work and social skills while working in the coffee shop housed in the school’s main floor concession stand.

The program is the brainchild of Beth O’Rourke, a moderate to severe special education teacher at the high school. For the past four years O’Rourke has worked with special education students at the high school, who, as part of their school day, learn vocational skills and gain work experience as part of their curriculum.

While past programs at the high school have had students wiping down cafeteria tables and document shredding, O’Rourke said she felt those skills didn’t carry far beyond the confines of school as real work experiences goes. So she set out to research what other schools were doing to teach employability skills to their special educations students.

“I went to a couple workshops and schools in Des Moines, Bellevue and Papillion and they’ve all started coffee shops or bakeries to provide a more realistic vocational training,” she said.

With the blessing of the high school administration, O’Rourke sought and secured a $1,000 grant from the Glenwood Foundation earlier this fall to buy the initial inventory and a pair of coffee makers.

And Ram Brew was born.

The coffee shop is currently open every Friday during second period – 8:55 a.m. to 9:46 a.m. A cup is $2. Traditional coffee,  French vanilla, breakfast blend, hot chocolate and hot apple cider are offered on the ever expanding menu.

“We did a survey of what the staff’s coffee interests were,” O’Rourke.
O’Rourke and another faculty member handle most of the brewing and pouring for safety purposes with special education students taking orders and collecting the money. Once orders are filled, the students load up carts and deliver the coffee to teachers’ classrooms.

“Since this is a learning experience with customer service skills for the students the teachers often times intentionally give them off amounts of money to make sure they are practicing counting the money and giving change.”

The first week, Ram Brew sold 10 cups. Last week that number had more than doubled.

The response of the special education students to the program and the interaction with staff has been great, O’Rourke said.

“They really like it. It’s something different, something more meaningful than shredding papers or sitting doing worksheets or talking about how much change you’d get back they are actually practicing that,” she said. “They’re showing they’re getting a lot more out of the real world application than they would a worksheet.”

A former student is creating a logo for the coffee shop and O’Rourke said plans are in the works to buy aprons for the student staff. The plan is to have the shop open throughout the year, perhaps offering smoothies or a cold drink option during the summer months and cookies down the road. O’Rourke also hopes to expand the shops schedule to two days a week.

As valuable as employability skills are to her students, O’Rourke sees as much value in the social skills that she’s seen blossom as they work in the coffee business. She said practicing knocking before going into classrooms, saying please and thank you, offering cream and sugar and making sure customers were satisfied has all been a part of the learning process for her students.

“Social skills, customer services skills, work skills, they’re all related,” she said.