Maui High’s Sunrise Cafe

The Saber Sunrise Cafe is a student-led area in O Building where students sell different snacks and drinks for affordable prices. Supervised by John Van Plantinga, the Differentiated Instruction Teacher teaching in O-101, students and teachers can come over every Friday from 7 am to 8 am to hang out with peers, listen to music, and enjoy good food and drink.

“The SSC is so my students can learn real-world skills and have confidence to work in restaurants and retail stores,” Van Plantinga said when asked about the cafe. “I decided to start it when I saw one of my former students working at McDonald’s as a cashier.”

The Cafe sells many different foods and drinks, including Pop-Tarts, hot chocolate, and coffee for teachers. But they don’t do it only for the snacks. “The money we make goes to the certificate route program that we used to construct the new Workplace Readiness (WPR) garden area,” Plantinga states. The garden area is an area where many different plants are being grown, from tomatoes to Hawaiian peppers. Plantinga is planning to add more to the area, where it will eventually become an outdoor classroom area, as well as an area where students can spend their Recess and Lunchtime. When the produce growing there is ready to harvest, they are sold to teachers, and the funds contribute to paying the investment made in the area, says Plantinga.

Working in the Sunrise Cafe is also a great pleasure. When asked what it’s like to work in the cafe, Sophomore Lomano Kolo states, “My favorite part is the indoors part, where I do the coffee for the teachers and clean everything, and restocking everything and stuff for hot chocolates, Caprisuns… we make new sausages and Pop-Tarts and McMuffins for the kids.” Working in the Saber Sunrise Cafe is a pleasant experience that comes with interacting with different students and teachers and making them happy.