By Tyler Lin
Coffee has always been an essential drink for teachers here at La Cueva, including Georgea Hantzopoulos. Hantzopoulos teaches home living for special education students, and she and a couple other staff members with the Intensive Global Support Services (IGSS) program started up a brand new coffee delivery service aimed to help students prepare for the future.
“We started the program because it was a good way for the students to practice providing a service to other people and to build communication skills and independent job skills for after high school,” said Hantzopoulos. She and many of the IGSS helpers like Drew Townes believe this program could help prepare students for the future.
”Yeah! I think that it gives them an opportunity to work with people outside of just our class,” Townes said. “They are able to practice generalizing they’re skills and using those skills with other adults or other people.”
Student Gabriel Peguero enjoys the program and said he loves meeting people and delivering the coffee to the teachers. Student Gabriel Sanchez said he loves seeing the smiles on everyone’s face.
“We do a coffee bar and (Hantzopoulos) sends out an email to all the teachers, with students we work on socializing and measuring things to help improve their kitchen skills,” Townes said.
Hantzopoulos said that she hopes in the future she can start accepting donations because “I just went and got all the stuff myself.”
Even though they’re just getting started they already have a plan and can envision the program growing. They hand out the coffee during fourth period on Tuesdays and hope to see you there.