Learning Skills, Making Friends, and Delivering Coffee

Oak Forest High School, part of Bremen High School District 228, houses a Southwest Cooperative (Co-Op) for special education (SPED) students during the week through a program called DESTINY (Discovering Every Skill That is Now Yours). The Co-Op includes students from all four District 228 schools (Bremen, Tinley Park, Hillcrest, Oak Forest) and additional schools located throughout the area. In the four dedicated DESTINY classrooms at Oak Forest High School, students learn functional, living, and vocational skills.

In 2014, DESTINY Program Director, Geri Keane, was seeking additional resources and opportunities to teach her students new work skills. SPED teacher, Lauren Brazel, who is passionate about the program and who has a disabled son, wanted to find a way to get involved. Brazel reached out to Keane and suggested a collaboration between the DESTINY Program and Brazel’s Kama Club, which develops a literary magazine full of art, song lyrics, poems, and writings each year.

Together, they established a coffee delivery program where Keane’s students deliver coffee orders each quarter to teachers with Brazel’s Kama Club members. When a teacher purchases a $2.00 cup of coffee or tea, DESTINY students get to deliver that order with a peer from Kama Club thus helping the DESTINY student learn valuable social and communication skills. Keane explains that even her non-verbal students are involved in the program and use an app-device to speak and take orders.

Any money that is raised through the coffee orders goes back to the Kama Club who uses the money to publish their magazine. Every year, the Kama Club chooses artwork from DESTINY students to include in the magazine and highlight the collaboration. Last year, the front cover of the magazine even featured a DESTINY student’s artwork.

Keane credits Brazel and says, “Lauren Brazel is phenomenal and encourages students to always be inclusive.”

Keane also notes that Brazel goes outside of the collaboration to make DESTINY students feel connected to other Oak Forest High School Students. Each year, Kama Club hosts a party to thank DESTINY students, celebrate their work, and form new connections.