Back to School again
The last time a September brought me the activities of a first day of school was back in 2005. At that time, I was teaching reading and writing for Crosswinds Middle School in Woodbury. While it was my fourth fall at Crosswinds, I was in a new room, with new team members, and working with a new format for the school year. There were lots of adjustments to make and get used to. And yet, it felt like most other “first days” I had experienced over my nearly 20 years of teaching - with the excitement, the nervousness, the fresh starts and lots of explaining of the basics to set up the classroom management that would make day to day operation run smoothly.
This September, Butter once again welcomed parents and children, teachers and students to a new school year – one that is quite different in so many ways and yet still holds that same return to routines, new beginnings and hope for growth. These first weeks of September also included a set of students here at Butter, through a new partnership with Wildflyer Coffee (read more), to learn how to be baristas. And for me, it felt like being a teacher on those first days of school all over again. Introducing six young people into the café at one time has been, well, as tiring as those first days of teaching middle school.
Since its beginning Butter has been a classroom in many ways, offering opportunities to learn and grow for staff and customers alike. Since moving to 37th and Nicollet, that has also meant being a classroom space for the residents of Nicollet Square who have joined us for internships. Now, we are expanding our scope, and with the support of the director of Wildflyer, Carley Kammerer, we are growing this training experience into a fuller, richer training that includes social skill building, job coaching, housing support and more.
While I’ve enjoyed being seen as “the teacher” here, the job of training and mentoring is one all of our staff participate in. We lean on customers as well to do the work of teaching, supporting and providing mentorship during these internships. I am blessed with having so many teachers in our community who know the café as a customer and who share their special ability to building teaching moments into any visit to Butter. As a teacher at heart, I still certainly enjoy creating those moments for customers, whether by explaining our composting program, naming vegetables in our boulevard gardens, or discussing the merits of removing tipping from our revenue and pricing structure.
This year our café is on a learning path of its own, as our staff takes a deep dive into the work of equity, diversity and inclusion. With the leadership of LaDonna Redmond, we are all committing to learn more about the work of becoming activists for changing policies and ideologies so that can build an antiracist society. As always, you, as customers, are our teachers and supporters. You offer the experiences we need to test our new skills and language. You offer the questions and critiques that point us to places for growth. You become the acknowledgers and affirmation providers that give us reason to celebrate and continue the daily work. And may we, as we model our new learning, be the inspiration you need to push yourself forward and work for justice. This year has not been business as usual, and hopefully, that will be the way it goes throughout the years ahead.
My feet are tired, my voice is tired. I’ve been repeating directions so many times they start sounding like a PSA. We restocked, made repairs, and updated. We made handouts, posters, schedules. There were “training and orienting” preparations. We handed out new t-shirts and hats. It’s been a whirlwind of activity that all coincided with public schools start up this year - so the familiar looks on the teachers visiting the cafe were felt a bit more deeply this time around. May we find our common path to walk as we continue to learn to be community.