BOONAH High School’s first Coffee and Cows morning was held last week giving the community a glimpse into its agriculture department.
The school’s Head of Department for Humanities Adam Sinclair said Coffee and Cows was a joint curricular project between business and agricultural studies.
“We designed the project as a way to give students opportunities to gain employment skills when it comes to the coffee side of things,” he said.
“Coffee and Cows will be held as a program over two terms and this will help students to develop business skills.”
He said learning how to be a barista, dealing with customers and running a little business would enable students to learn skills with real world benefits.
They will be able to list these experiences and skills on a resume, giving them a leg up when seeking employment.
“We have built a very good relationship with Jared Pennell from Arthur Clive’s coffee van,” he said.
“He is working with us to train our students to an employable level.”
Mr Sinclair said the cross curricular project also benefitted the school’s agriculture students.“The idea is to use the coffee service to get people down to our ag area to see what’s going on with the cattle we have at the school right now,” he said.
“We have a Cattle Club and its members show people what they are doing with the animals and how the feed trials are going.
“We also want them to be able to develop relationships with members of the community and the industry.”
He said because the project was still very new, he was waiting to see ‘where it goes’ and how it can continue to provide opportunities to the students.
The Cattle Club kids wearing club shirts mingle with everyone, walk them down to the ag section and explain what is going on with the cattle.
“[Cattle Club students] love wearing their shirt and are more than happy to brave cold early morning starts for the sake of their program,” he said.
“They are happy to do it, there is not one complaint.
“The response we are getting from the kids is unbelievable to the point where one of the students emailed us to thank us for the opportunity.”
Those attending the event purchase coffee and all money taken is directed back into the project.
Coffee and Cows community event will be held at the school every six weeks.