Cavs’ Sip-n-Savor teaches life skills, communication at La Salle-Peru High School

Inside La Salle-Peru High School is a student-run business and they are brewing more than coffee.

Cavs’ Sip-n-Savor, is a coffee shop serving hot or iced coffee and tea along with hot chocolate and lemonades. Students in Transitions, a post-graduation special education program, created the business to help develop life skills.

This year they kicked the program up a notch.”

—  Michelle McGuire, mother of a Students in Transition student

Michelle McGuire said her son Michael, has made “huge leaps” in the short amount of time he has been working with the program.

“It’s like a little light bulb went off,” she said. “He’s so much more communicative. He never asked for help and then all of the sudden he is asking for help ... one day I caught him making eggs for a friend – he just asked her if she wanted any.”

Kristie Witte, a special education teacher at L-P and head of the Transitions Program, said the program is operated out of a house near campus for students ages 18 to 22 who want to return to school and continue building real-world skills.

“Everything that we would want to do in transitions is done during this time,” she said. “We have our life skills, our communication skills, employment, everything we need.”

McGuire said Michael has been in skills programs since he was two, but this year her son just grew.

“This year they kicked the program up a notch,” she said. “Mrs. Witte worked with him on asking what he can do to help and allowing him to put in the work.”

One of the main goals of the program is to help students find employment that matches their goals and skills. Witte said Eric Poole, a student at L-P High School, is her number one barista.

“I really feel like Eric could go work at a Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks right now and be really successful. He’s just very successful,” she said.

Although Poole said he enjoys making lattes and working at Sip n’ Savor, his dream is to become an actor. He said the skills he is learning through the program will help him achieve his goal.

“I’m learning how to take directions and make the drinks the way the customer wants, not the way we want,” he said. “I learned how to count money … I maybe want to make some commercials for us.”

Michael McGuire hopes to utilize the skills to work for a local company in job services. He said he has learned better communication, following rules, and the ability to work for a long period of time.

Witte said the biggest thing she felt like they were learning is how to handle money and the idea of a positive and negative balance.

“Each day we go through and we put in our debit side and then we put in our deposits,” she said.

The proceeds from the coffee shop will go to a special or event or outing. Last year, the group went to Dave & Busters. This year, the group hopes to go to the Hollywood Palms Theatre in Naperville.

“They set a goal and they researched how much it’s going to cost them and then we put it on the board,” Witte said. “The whole point of this is many of our students are not fortunate enough to be able to get out of the area.”

Witte said it is inspiring to work with a group of students and watch them improve and even more exciting when parents start seeing a difference at home.

“That means they’re crossing environments,” she said. “They are taking the skills that we are embedding an instilling and applying them outside and that’s the biggest thing. That’s the hardest thing for our students to do.”