During his B-lunch rotation shift, personal finance teacher Randy Caldwell makes a stop at room 328 to visit URite, a school cafe for staff operated by students in the work experience program. He picks up his meal for only $7.
“We don’t have to get in our cars and get lunch in a short 30 minute timespan,” Caldwell said. “You can just fill out the Google Form and pick all your condiments and amenities you want with it. Got a delicious meal waiting on you as soon as lunch period starts. Fresh and hot.”
The program was begun by SSD teacher Shannon Hayslett during her time at the middle school, with a slightly different program entitled Great Choice that consisted of a coffee and snack cart. Launched at the high school in 2022, it has been a success for almost two years now. URite not only provides staff with convenient dining options during their lunch time, but also provides experience in food service and an expansion of skills for the students who participate.
“It’s considered part of a work experience program,” Hayslett says. “Community-based instruction to learn not just employable skills but learning skills as well.”
Although URite definitely provides skills for students to help with working in culinary fields, that’s not all it does for the participants.
“It fills the need for actual communication skills,” Hayslett said. “If you get so used to just communicating with the people you see on a daily basis you kind of forget how to communicate with new people.”
The cooking and talking with peers and staff seems to be something the students take a lot of enjoyment in.
“I like serving the people,” senior Joshua Henderson said. “It’s cool, helping them out.”
This is URite’s second year in business with no plans to stop.
“I love it because it’s an inclusive environment,” Caldwell said. “They have students who are fully immersed and they leave skill sets that carry on outside of the schoolroom setting.”
Despite the fact that it seems to be a popular program now, this was not always the case. At the start of the program’s creation, there was a lot of pushback.
“I was hearing teachers would not really want to have this program here,” Hayslett said. “That they wouldn’t want anything like this made from students, especially students with, they considered, lower-functioning skills.”
But URite pushed through the negative feedback and have even turned some people in their favor.
“In those interest forms we got some staff who were like ‘No, I wouldn’t want that. I wouldn’t do it,’ but they’re some of the best customers we have,” Hayslett said.
URite is an overall beneficial program that helps both the staff and students of UCity High School.
“It’s not just a school thing,” Hayslett said. “It’s a life thing.