I think it is much more meaningful for the students if they see it as a support because, accept for some of the students who are much more higher–functioning, most of these students aren't going to go on to higher level academic stuff. For them, they want to feel successful in this program and eventually in getting a job. They want to see that blend, I would think, between the two areas. That would make more sense to them rather than just taking a body of information and literacy material that they can't really relate to.

Carrie also emphasized the importance of using the classroom to prepare students for the activities they did in the coffee shop. "It is such a high pressure situation that you cannot just have a teaching moment all of a sudden. It is ongoing. There's pressure. There are expectations." She felt that once the students had control over the literacy portions of an activity, they could then learn all the other aspects of a specific job in the coffee shop. Carrie said,

With each job there are multiple tasks and organizational skills—those are huge. If they are going to bake muffins, they have to compile all the tools [and] the ingredients. Then they have to read the recipe and then go through all the steps. There's a timeline. There is also the hygiene aspect. There's working together, the measurement, the reading. There are many, many different skill sets in there.

The instructors felt that the groundwork that is needed to successfully complete these activities was laid in the classroom. An example of this approach was the way in which Fran created the fraction lesson to help students when they were reading the recipes in the coffee shop. It was in the classroom that students also reviewed the vocabulary in the recipes; learned the subtle meanings of verbs, such as blend, fold, and mix; and learned to read expiration dates, food labels, and measurements. Fran said she made a concerted effort to connect activities such as numeracy, which she said the students may not value as much, to the activities in the coffee shop. She explained that this connection helped the students to recognize the significance of numeracy in their daily lives. In addition to learning the literacy and numeracy skills that were needed to support activities in the coffee shop, incidents that occurred in the coffee shop were examined in the classroom. Suzanne wrote,

The classroom also provides a forum for discussion about coffee shop incidents or issues. There is often little time to discuss these on coffee shop days. The classroom, in this way, becomes an outlet for opinions, feelings, and suggestions.