Student-Run Cafe Offers Real-World Work Experience

The Newline Cafe is the only coffee shop in the south side neighborhood of Silver City.

It’s also a classroom for Escuela Verde, the high school next door that focuses on emotional growth and social opportunities just as much as academics. Nestled along the Menomonee Valley, the Newline Cafe is a bright and versatile event space and cafe where students develop life skills in a real work environment.

“As a school we do project-based learning,” said Jeremy Ault, an advisor at Escuela Verde. “We wanted to create something called a public-facing classroom. The cafe afforded us the opportunity to showcase to the community what education could look like in the radical sense through learning and equity.”

Jasper Schmiedel is a special ed student at Escuela Verde and one of Newline’s biggest advocates. After doing a whole year of virtual learning, he’s excited to work in person at the cafe and make drinks for customers and students.

“I like the people,” said Schmiedel. “I like to make orders. I’m learning how to make coffee and I’m doing taste testing.”

Newline Cafe is run by students and is designed to represent the identities of the community.  The teachers, called advisors at Escuela Verde, are creating an evolving curriculum that can be taught in the cafe space.

Hands on-learning helps to develop skills that the students will use every day in the workforce– money handling, customer service, building maintenance and teamwork.

“When they graduate we want to make sure they’re confident enough to apply for jobs they’re interested in,” said Lucero Serna, Newline Cafe’s community educator and barista.

Escuela Verde students aren’t just baristas. Their work touches every part of running a business such as marketing, entrepreneurship, product design and interior design.

“They don’t just create throw away projects for their portfolio,”  said Ault. “The community can purchase the products they create. It’s real world product design.”

One of the goals of the cafe is to prioritize skill development for students who are likeliest to face employment challenges after graduation, including students who are learning English and those with a variety of disabilities.

“A lot of people use inclusion as an adjective, but we want it to be a verb,” said Ault. “Inclusion is active. When you come into the cafe you’ll find students of different cultural, linguistic and intellectual backgrounds and frameworks that they are bringing to you. What other coffee shops do you see that in? What other high schools do you see that in?”

The Newline Cafe also gives students an opportunity to build educational resources for their community. There are students involved with Teens Grow Greens who educate the community on caring for a garden.  Other students working with Safe and Sound can host workshops on mental health. Another student’s project aims to help community members understand their rights when dealing with the police.

“We want to organically develop our educational programming as a response to what the community is curious about,” said Sarah Luther, art educator and Newline Cafe manager. “We have an amazing resource in our students. They have a huge wealth of knowledge  through the research and projects they work on. We want them to see this cafe as a space where they can share their knowledge with the community.”

Three Escuela Verde students currently work at Newline Cafe full time. One is interested in opening his own restaurant one day.

“I want them to know what being in a healthy workplace looks like,” said Serna. “I want them to feel like their needs are getting met, that they can communicate with us honestly and that their ideas and perspectives are valuable.”

As the cafe’s baristas graduate, many will directly enter the workforce. Some may choose to stay in the service industry. According to research from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the American food and beverage industry had over 250,000 job openings in the month of October alone. With the skills students are learning on the job, they may enter the turbulent workforce with a few extra bargaining chips.

“The values that workers around the world are waking up to in the pandemic are the same values that are already inherent at Escuela Verde,” said Luther. “We come from a place of genuine respect for our students, and are working to ensure they leave with the same respect for themselves. We don’t want them to accept anything less from anyone else.”