Lining up for coffee fix

Grownups are getting in line at Tokoroa’s Tainui Full Primary School.

Not to attend class but to get their coffee fixes each day.

Ten primary aged students recently opened their very own Coffee Cafe at the school where they are getting barista and baking training from trained chef and technology teacher Des Ngatipa.

They are also learning about the business side of running a cafe from placing orders, health and safety, and sourcing supplies .

Finances are calculated right down to how many marshmallows they should give out with the hot chocolates.

To ensure they don’t cut into regular class time, the students run the cafe on a roster system before school, during first and second break, lunch time, and briefly after school. Anyone is welcome to visit.

Two weeks into the initiative student Tayla Karoro-Reu said they have been flat out.

‘‘We are getting over 100 orders every single day. On the first day I think we made 140 coffees,’’ she said.

Chantelle Lachman said they love being involved.

‘‘It’s tiring sometimes but still really fun,’’ she said. ‘‘We all like cooking and people say it’s really yummy. They all say thanks.’’ Ava Hulme said learning the skills would help them to get jobs once they move on to high school.

‘‘It means when we are older and we need a job we can be baristas,’’ she said.

‘‘When we are in high school we can get a barista training certificate but [technically] we could get it now after we finish this because we know how to do it.’’ She said while they have had a couple of disasters with milk, all and all things have been running smoothly.

‘‘When we first started practising we used dishwashing liquid and water so we could practise with foam,’’ she said.

‘‘We are also practising how to do coffee art and I can kind of do a fern.’’ Nevaeh Reid, who planted the seed for the initiative after talking with Ngatipa, said they were also learning about sustainability.

‘‘We are going to make planter boxes out of our milk bottles and our coffee beans go into our compost,’’ she said.

‘‘We were also thinking of getting reusable cups and putting the Tainui logo on them for our teachers.’’ Ngatipa said support for the initiative was part of the school’s push for more student led learning. There is a lot of trial and error but the kids are driving the learning,’’ he said. ‘‘I am a chef by trade and then I taught a diploma in cookery at polytech so it is bringing in these trade skills. It is really good because they are transferable to jobs. Our school is big on inquiry and collaborative learning where it is student centred,’’ he said.