Photo courtesy of Marshall High School. Teacher Erica Schmidt (left) pays for and receives her coffee from Tiger Cafe working students at Marshall High School. Tiger Cafe provides work experience for special education and English-learner students.

MARSHALL — Marshall High School’s Tiger Cafe is experiencing an ample amount of success, which provides internship and work experience for the school’s special education and English-learner students. The two departments have also created other opportunities with Southwest Minnesota State University and the Practical Assessment Exploration System Lab at the middle school.

“We want to focus specifically on some opportunities of work experience for some of our students who may not always get some of those same opportunities that others have,” high school principal Brian Jones said at Tuesday’s school board meeting. “Our focus becomes on how can we get them some employability and job skills so when they are finished with us, they can go out and an employer can look at them and hire them in a competitive wage position.”

High school special education teacher Nicole Jans runs Tiger Cafe with her students during block four Wednesdays and Fridays, while English-learner teacher Kari Loft brings in her students block one on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

“It’s just been fun to see them in that experience and just in a new light,” Jans said. “It’s been very positive, and we feel like these skills are going to be able to transition beyond high school, and it’s not just learning in a classroom.”

The idea came about last fall, and they use the Tiger Den area in the cafeteria. Students are trained to make coffee and smoothies, and deliver it directly to those who order.

“About a year and a half ago, we applied through for a LYFT grant and Main Stay Cafe was our business partner,” Jans said. “We started really thinking about, how can we get them the job skills they need? Because, it’s really easy to teach about taking initiative and time management in a classroom setting. Those skills are hard to apply if you don’t actually have work experience.”

A LFYT grant is a state-funded Minnesota program that helps high schools develop career and technical education programs.

“The teachers can place an order, and then those orders get printed on little slips. Our students come to class, they read the slips, and they go make them,” Jans said. ” There’s different jobs … Every day it’s different. We have a work schedule.”

Jans said Tiger Cafe helps her students with several skills like teamwork, social, money management, supply and demand, janitorial tasks and more. She also said it’s been a great experience and they’ve heard positive feedback.

Loft also got her students involved with the cafe, and has seen good outcomes.

“These kids are learning so much by doing the hands-on and just working together,” Loft said. “Most of these students don’t have a part time job yet, but now they’ve got to experience that.”

Loft’s English-learner seniors also get experience at the PAES Lab, which is set up for students to try out various workforce areas.

“They’re working in five different job areas, and their English level doesn’t matter. … We just want to give them some skills,” Loft said. “It’s just an ever growing program. Our students love it, the skills they’re learning from it will help them in their future career.”

This is the third year of students working with the PAES lab, which is still looking to grow even more.

“Electrical is one of my favorites, because you learn how to wire your own house … They can go home and do some of these jobs,” Loft said. “I do want to shout out to Erica Hess (Marshall middle school teacher) at the PAES lab. I think she does a wonderful job at expanding our PAES lab. We have a hair and nails area, also there’s going to be a bike repair place, and she’s working on some medical jobs.”

Jans also has a group of eight students that work with SMSU and Chartwells in a partnership, where they develop real-life job skills amongst various tasks throughout the dining center.

“They are developing real life job skills with not just me as their supervisor in the Tiger Cafe, but with a real boss at SMSU,” Jans said. “They rotate on a bi-weekly basis. They do a job for a couple weeks, then they will switch to a different one so they are gaining skills throughout the whole SMSU department.”

The group spends about three hours a week there, and also get paid through the Private Industry Council.

Jones mentioned the Area Learning Center is still doing well with its work experience program, as is the career internship program with the high school. They partnered with MNWest this year for students to earn elective college credit.

“The focus of this is to give students a glimpse into some career,” Jones said. “That wouldn’t be possible without the support of mentors within the Marshall community, working and opening up time to mentor those students.”