Learning Life Skills, One Truffle At A Time

Ever get yelled at for having candy in class when you were younger? Well, let your jealousy run rampant because there’s now a class at that doesn’t just let you have candy in class: it teaches you how to make it.

Welcome to Room 121 at North Kingstown High School where students in the school’s transitional and life skills program get the opportunity to exercise real-life scenarios in the comfort of the classroom.

So what did program coordinator Chris Healy settle on for the program’s first products? Why, truffles of course.

The handful of students in the inaugural year of the program, dubbed “The Skipper Dippers,” make the truffles, package them and sell them to faculty and staff across the district. According to Healy, the process teaches the students important math skills as well as provides vocational training.

“They calculate the cost to make the truffles and count the money from the sales,” said Healy. “The program really allows the students to apply their skills in real-life situations.”

Students roll, dip and package the truffles right in the classroom with five easy steps for each process.

“All of them can do it with help, but getting them to go and do it independently is the important part,” said Healy.

The Skipper Dippers plot their delivery routes from the high school to , , and the , where they deliver the scrumptious goodies every two to three weeks.

“It keeps us busy,” said Healy. “We were going to do all the schools, but it would’ve been too much. We would have been truffling all day.”

Sold in bags of three for $1, the chocolate-covered and Sunny Butter-filled truffles are a big hit and the students know it. According to Michael Rosenfield, one of the Skipper Dippers, the first words out of people’s mouths after eating the truffles are, “This is so good.”

Luckily, the students of Room 121 get to reap the benefits of their labor. According to Healy, the profit is divided among the students and put into a People’s Credit Union account to be used for field trips and for more life skills programs.

But, the Skipper Dippers will be looking to mix things up a bit and venture outside the world of truffles. Healy hints that chocolate-covered pretzels and popcorn may be on the horizon.