The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
STOREFRONT SHOWS OFF SPECIAL NEEDS
Unique Like Me provides vocational training for students across 5 districts
Recently celebrating its sixth year in Painesville, the student-manned Unique Like Me remains as novel as its name implies.
An extension of the Lake County Educational Service Center, the Unique Like Me storefront offers special needs students the ability to learn and train in an occupational setting.
“Students demonstrate their skills and talents to interact with the community by selling their own handmade products,” said ESC Jobs Coach and storefront operator Nancy Neal.
Unique Like Me evolved out of ESC’s vocational programs that previously featured more off-site interactions. After having rolled back some of its offerings, the school districts of Painesville City, Riverside, Perry, and Madison as well as Broadmoor School wanted to continue to utilize the program’s vocational training, which resulted in the physical storefront.
Unique Like Me may be singular in its purpose, but
its benefits are manifold according to Neal.
“If they were to work at other places they’re usually more in the background,” she said. “Here, we teach them to be up front and center.
“They are responsible
for greeting the customers when they come in, for helping the customers when they have questions, for running the register, everything a retail situation would involve.”
The implicit nature of the store allows for a level of patience not always afforded in typical retail interactions.
“Here they get a chance to show their abilities
without being judged or criticized,” Neal said. “When a customer comes in they’re not expecting a speedy self-checkout ‘let’s get out of here’ situation.”
In addition to learning and improving upon social interaction, the craft work that students undertake is also intended to instill workforce skills.
“They’re learning to assemble and make products,
as well as running the storefront,” Neal said. “They’re not only learning to work with customers in a retail aspect, but they’re learning what might be applied to a factory job where they’re doing assembly work.”
For Neal, the store’s benefits expand beyond those needed specifically for special-needs students. The vocational training Unique Like Me offers is applicable for a wide range of teenagers and young adults.
“They’re learning transportation, when to be on a cell phone, what’s appropriate to talk about at lunch, coming in with a uniform if that’s required,” she said. “Those are all things that we think our
traditional students get and they don’t. We’re beyond that for these students because they will go in knowing.”
And Neal says Unique Like Me’s importance goes further. The interdependence that special-needs students develop with the community they live and work within has proven mutually advantageous.
“In a very simple nutshell, it’s visibility,” she said. “For (the students) to be in the community and for community members to see that they can function and learn independent skills, it’s just awesome. People come in and interact with this population and learn about them from a different avenue. It’s very rewarding. You can’t get that anywhere else.”
Unique Like Me is an active participant in numerous Painesville community events, but can only feature its student staff during regular school hours due to the vocational nature of their program. However, students are allowed to volunteer to work after-hour events like last year’s Open House event as well as the city’s upcoming First Friday on April 5.
The storefront, located at 184 Main St., runs entirely as a non-profit with all proceeds going towards keeping the store open.