CINCINNATI, Ohio – Move over, Starbucks. There’s another barista in your city and this one is run by a group of FFA students.

Aiken High School, a Cincinnati Public School located nine miles north of downtown Cincinnati, caught the attention of coffee lovers in southwest Ohio when 100 FFA members at this school of 1,300 began roasting coffee beans they purchased from across the globe.

Their coffee business is called Awaken at Aiken with the tag line “a coffee with culture.” It’s been in existence for six years and shows no signs of slowing down.

Spearheading this effort is Aiken High teacher Aaron Parker.

“I’m not an ag teacher, but I’ve grown into the part,” Parker said proudly. “Our coffee program got started because of our students. In one storage room are huge bags of coffee beans from Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Brazil … from all over the globe. On a daily, rotating basis, the students roast and brew coffee that originates from their homeland.”  

If there is a United Nation’ of high schools, this one is it. There are 50 countries and 40 languages represented at Aiken High School, which has a 95.2 percent minority enrollment. 

“Our coffee program got started because of our students,” Parker said. “The coffee project produces a kind of student that is confident, a student that is ready to create not just the transformation in the coffee but in themselves. The students are learning the science of the transformation of a roast. We have to treat coffee as we do each student, that is, in a very special way.”

The coffee production, Parker said, involves a roaster. Math comes into play as there is concern for time and temperature of the roaster.

“We serve and sell the coffee to the student body every morning,” Parker said. “It teaches them interpersonal skills, leadership skills, financial responsibility, social skills and calibrations.”

The students learn the food-science component of coffee production, then get a real-world retail experience through their in-school coffee shop. As Parker put it, “in promoting their business, students are proud to source coffee ethically, roast coffee professionally, brew coffee meticulously and package coffee creatively. We have an agribusiness here, where we’re involved in every stop in the process so we can be the most productive ag community.”

Did Parker say “ag?” Indeed. Aiken High FFA is more than just a cup of coffee in the morning. Down a paved, winding decline behind the school, visitors will spot a large greenhouse, 35 raised garden beds and a menagerie of animals on the 51-acre school grounds – all tended to by the FFA students at the school.

While Parker is the catalyst that keeps this FFA chapter running smoothly, credit Aiken High principal Liza Votaw for its birth.

“Seven years ago, we started an after-school garden club, added plants on the premise, erected a fence and got the local community involved,” Votaw said. “I first took the idea to my math department and had them teach the kids about design of the beds, circumference, volume and such. It was a learning experience.”

That initial effort has resulted in 35 garden beds that are filled with plants from throughout the world.

“We started planting items from the students’ area of the world,” Parker said. “We wanted to create a sense of belonging. In that garden we have basil from Ghana, eggplant from the Middle East, peppers from Nepal. Every continent is represented. This way the students are sharing their own culture.” 

Animals began making their appearance on the school grounds. First came chickens. Those were followed by “Ollie” the alpaca. (Since then, they’ve added three more alpacas). Next came ducks, goats, quail, rabbits, a miniature donkey and a miniature steer. And there’s the greenhouse, mulch piles and a community garden, where even tomatoes and potatoes are grown. The students like to boast that they’re planting no-till, with no pesticides or insecticides.

The FFA students even erected a USDA high tunnel. And there’s more on the horizon. The chapter recently received $15,000 in equipment from a mushroom company to assist in growing mushrooms on the school grounds. And, honey bees and hives are on the planning board, as are zip lines, rock climbing and a pond that will include fishing and kayaking.

“The students built everything except the red barn, which once held the equipment for the football team,” Parker said. “There’s animals in the barn now.”

And there other activities at this FFA chapter, such as surveying wild plants on their prairie, tie-dyeing clothes with black walnuts and blackberries, marketing manure, eggs and vegetables. Nothing too small or too large for this FFA.

“We eventually turned it all into an agriculture career pathway,” Parker said. “When you walk out the doors at the back of our school…THAT’s when you enter our FFA classrooms. Most FFAs have their projects and classes indoors, not this one.”

According to Parker, roughly 300 students at the school are those with limited or interrupted formal education. Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE) is an umbrella term used to describe a diverse subset of the English language learner population who share several unifying characteristics. SLIFE participants usually are new to the U.S. school system and have had interrupted or limited schooling opportunities in their native country. They have limited backgrounds in reading and writing in their native language and are below grade level in most academic skills.

“These students are from abroad where they may be in poverty, war, genocide, civil strife and more,” Parker said. “They immigrated to the U.S. Some are asylum seekers.”

Aiken High serves children in grades 7-12 of multiple ethnicity, disabilities and backgrounds. In 2014, Aiken became partners with New Tech, a collaboration that promotes the idea of project-based learning (PBL), which is used in order to encourage self-regulation in students.

“I interview every student who comes to Aiken and when I do that I tell them about the expectations and opportunities here,” Votaw said. “Agriculture is our most thriving opportunity by far. Kids are coming here because they love farming, the animals and the opportunities here. Our students will go on to having incredible achievement post-high school.”