Saratoga News

Photograph by John Pancharian

Pat Elliott (right), special-education teacher at Redwood Middle School, arranged for her students, including Meghan Grady (left) and Jessie Auricchio, to work during the school year at Florentine Restaurant on Big Basin Way.

Special-education students learn the restaurant ropes

By John Pancharian

Florentine Restaurant had a little extra help at its Big Basin Way restaurant during the school year.

And the eight developmentally delayed students in Pat Elliott's special-education class at Redwood Middle School not only learned a lot, they thoroughly enjoyed the experience. From November through the end of the school year, they went to the Big Basin Way restaurant in groups of two twice a week, for an hour each time, as part of a vocational skills program Elliott pioneered this year at Redwood.

"I wanted a program where the kids could develop work attitudes, skills and habits, where they could develop self-awareness," Elliott says.

To this end Louise Levy, special-education director for the Saratoga Union School District, contacted a number of businesses along Big Basin Way, asking them whether they would be open to allowing student volunteers to help out, under the supervision of Elliott's classroom aid and job coach Melanie Burgonio.

Elliott says Florentine gave her the best response, so she chose the restaurant as her partner in the program, sending students over half an hour before it opened to help prepare for the day.

"I folded napkins, picked up napkins [from the tables] and did takeout bags," eighth-grader Jessie Auricchio says.

She enjoyed the experience overall--especially folding and placing candy in the takeout napkins. The most challenging part, she says, was trying to finish all the napkins she had in the hour she was there.

Eighth-grader Meghan Grady also had fun at Florentine. By the end of the school year, she had learned to set tables. "I had to know where the napkin goes and the silverware goes and the plate goes. I had to know what place the chairs go," she says.

Her favorite part of her Florentine job was making a reservation for herself and Burgonio toward the end of the program when the two had lunch together. And the hardest part was the napkins: "The candy was so small I had a hard time."

The students also filled bread baskets.

"We just felt proud when the kids came home and said, 'I went to work today,' " Meghan's mother, Charlene Grady, says.

"Jessie came home and folded the napkins," her mother, Amy Auricchio, says. "She showed her grandmother how to do it, and that was a big deal."

"They weren't any trouble at all," Florentine general manager David Hurley says, adding that folding napkins is something he has to nag his waiters to do.

When the program ended, the students presented Hurley with a photo montage to thank him for inviting them to work in the restaurant.

For Hurley, though, the appreciation was mutual.

"How often can you be here at 10:30 on a Thursday morning and have two kids with huge smiles on their faces shouting 'David! David!' when you come in?" he asks.

Hurley said he would participate in the program again--and Elliott plans to give him the chance. She plans to continue and expand the program to other businesses, including preschools.

"We've kind of practiced in class by having little kids come in," Elliott says. "It was fabulous."

Her students read stories to the preschoolers, played games with them and helped out with snack time.

Elliott's goal is to use the work program to prepare her students for the prevocational program at Saratoga High School.

A $400 grant from the Saratoga Education Foundation provided funds for T-shirts the students wore on the job.

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