Special Blend: Run by New Orleans Students With Disabilities, rOAst Serves Up Hope — and Great Coffee
July 30, 2019
By: Beth Hawkins
Source: The 74
Things have gotten decidedly upscale at the little coffee shop located in George Washington Carver High School, starting with the name. tOAsty’s — motto: “We just want to warm you up!” — has been rebranded as rOAst. The conceit common to both names, the capital O-A combination, is the school’s shorthand for Opportunities Academy, the student program that runs the New Orleans coffee shop.
OA was launched three years ago by Louisiana’s Collegiate Academies network of schools as a way of serving special education students who need transition services, the legally mandated programming that helps prepare 18- to 21-year-olds with disabilities for life after high school. Talk of college is present in virtually every aspect of the culture in Collegiate’s schools, and a staff member thought to create a transition program that looked as much like college as possible.
At tOAsty’s, the inaugural OA class served a decent, if less than robust, brew in plastic mugs, learning communication, simple math, meal preparation and other skills that would help the handful of young people enrolled lead lives that would be as independent as possible.