‘Tiger Mochas’ at Alabama high school use coffee to fuel life skills of special ed students
Tiger Mochas creates interactions around coffee between the general and special education populations at Auburn High School. (Michael Tomberlin / Alabama News Center)
The halls of Auburn High School (AHS) are buzzing once again this Friday morning with students back at school for a new year. But the buzz will be even greater on future Friday mornings and it won’t be just because of football season.
This buzz will have caffeine as the cause, and the power behind it is Tiger Mochas.
Most every Friday during the school year, students from the special education department at AHS transform into “Tiger Mochas” and sell coffee to other students and teachers.
“Tiger Mochas was started in 2016 as a way to offset transportation costs for off-campus excursions where kids go and get life skills doing work with the community, working in situations where they can build skills for their post-secondary life,” said Johnny Turner, special education department chair at AHS and the leader of Tiger Mochas. “Since then it’s grown into something even bigger. We actually do a lot of funding for most of the special education programs that happen here within the high school.”
It’s an amazing thing to see, but there is more going on here than the serving of coffee.
“It’s been a great thing for everybody, really,” Turner said. “We’ve been able to get our kids involved – get them around the general ed population, get them working and doing something and feeling good about what they do.”
Shannon Pignato, AHS principal, loves Friday mornings in her school.
“Tiger Mochas to me, having been a former special education teacher, is really just an opportunity for us to really bring all of our programs together and to see our students, especially our general ed high school students – who typically would maybe shy away from our students who are in our special population – they interact with each other, they’re serving each other, they’re having conversations about the weekend,” she said.
“I think just seeing them have community here in the hallways before we start the day is just a great way to get things going.”
Tiger Mochas are not confined to Friday mornings at AHS. Everyone from the Auburn Chamber of Commerce to parent-teacher organizations support the program.
“This Tiger Mochas group does go out into the community in other schools,” Pignato said. “Not only are they interacting with their peers here, they do community events with the Chamber and businesses and they go to our elementary schools. PTOs will hire them for them to serve other teachers. So it really just kind of spreads the joy, and the caffeine.”
Moreover, the coffee is great.
Tiger Mochas partnered with Gleason Jones, an AHS graduate who started Minimalist Coffee in Opelika, to create a Tiger Mochas blend of coffee named Tiger Eye Coffee.
Under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), students can stay in high school until they are 21. Tiger Mochas helps use that extra time to its full potential.
“That time is just built on life skills, job skills, transition work, soft skills for employment,” Turner said. “Everything is based around that.”
Tiger Mochas has also helped students get jobs, and it lines up perfectly with the mission of Bitty & Beau’s, a coffee chain that employs those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Bitty & Beau’s has locations in Auburn and Birmingham.
“This has been a springboard to put some of our kids at Bitty & Beau’s,” Turner said. “We’re trying to teach the skills that can help them out.”
In 2020, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey awarded Tiger Mochas with the AlabamaWorks! Innovator Award for its approach to creating jobs and preparing students for the workforce.
Pignato said other schools have reached out, wanting to do something similar to help their general education and special education students interact in such a positive, unforced way.
It’s why Friday mornings at AHS is about more than just coffee.
“The social aspect of hanging out. Being able to talk to individuals,” Turner said. “Even people that walk around day to day have a lot of social anxiety, so the more experiences you can have in just having really good purposeful social interactions is the best.
“We don’t have to have a special event. Just every Friday, let’s show up and get after it.”
