Students not only tried to meet the expectations with regard to the ways of doing the coffee shop activities, such as preparing for baking by assembling all the ingredients, but they also began to meet expectations that the instructor set regarding their personal growth and abilities. Rouda said,

They teach you how to be okay, like yourself…They teach you how…Like example. [I'm at the placement] 8:30 until 3:00. It's long hours. I can do it if I get the job. I can do it. That is what they teach you. 'Go ahead Rouda, you can do it. You can do it.' Something like that. To be what you have to be. Do it, and how to be better, you know. Something like that.

Room for Error

One of the reasons that students were willing to push their learning, and to analyse their learning, may be because they knew mistakes were simply a part of their learning. They were not penalized in any way if a mistake was made, and were pushed to think about mistakes as an important part of learning. Nadine described how she gained more confidence in herself because she was encouraged by Carrie to try new tasks and work through her initial confusion, apprehension, and errors. She said Carrie taught her "to do things like, you don't know what to do and she say, 'It's okay if you don't understand, you do it the next day and you get a handle on it." In addition, Nadine said that, Carrie helped her to feel differently about herself, and she needed Carrie to push her to try new activities. Through this process, she was able to gain new confidence in herself. "If you have no confidence, like me, by myself, I won't push me to do anything."

Rouda said that she always knew that the coffee shop was a safe place to make mistakes, but at the same time, she recognized that she wouldn't have the same flexibility once she was working at her job placement.

When you are in school or [the employment preparation program] sometimes, as a human, you make a mistake, and you think, 'Okay, I have to depend on my teacher; she will be telling me.' Now by yourself, at a placement, no teacher [is] telling you something. You have to be smart yourself, to do it, everything by yourself.