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When Erin Berkeley graduates from high school next year, her dream is to open and operate her own restaurant.
Berkeley, who will turn 18 in a few weeks and who has Down syndrome, got a jump-start on that goal this summer during Down Syndrome Association of Greater Richmond’s Summer Employment Academy, a four-week long program that provides work experience to high school students with the genetic disorder.
It was Berkeley’s second straight year of participation in the program. This year, eight businesses in the Richmond area took part: Shoney’s on West Broad Street, Fresh to Frozen, Lifelong Learning Institute, The Laurels of Bon Air, Delta Hotel by Marriott, Henrico Library at Twin Hickory, 2nd and Charles and Ball Office Products.
Berkeley and the other participants worked with a different business each week, learning new skills and discovering more about what each business does. Her favorite experience was working at Shoney’s, where she made new friends and even received a tip from one of the customers she helped serve.
Her time at Shoney’s helped her think more about her dream to open up her own restaurant one day, according to her mother, Peggy Berkeley.
“What we found is that she has a strong interest and affinity for restaurants,” she said. “It was this summer academy that piqued her interest in restaurant work, and now I think it has driven home the point that that’s something she’ll definitely want to pursue as a grown-up job.”
The Berkeleys found out about the summer academy through their membership in the DSAGR, which debuted the program last summer. This year, the academy welcomed eight students and eight businesses, up from five last year, according to DSAGR Education Director Kim Owens said.
“The purpose of the program was really to make sure that our students with Down syndrome had individual work experiences similar to summer jobs that any other 16- or 17-year-old would also have,” Owens said. “It occurred to me a couple years ago that they weren’t having these experiences.”
Teens can learn a lot from summer jobs, Owens said. It was important for her to design a program that gave students with intellectual disabilities those experiences, but with the added components of job support and classroom time to learn what Owens refers to as “business soft skills.”
For people with disabilities, educational support often is task-focused, Owens said.
“We focus on ‘Can they do a particular task, can they sort silverware,’” she said. “We didn’t want this to be task-focused. We know that individuals with Down syndrome can ultimately learn a task. They’re limited sometimes by their soft skills.”
For two days each week, the students had classroom time, during which special education teachers from Chesterfield County Public Schools focused on teaching skills such as problem-solving, appropriate business communication and proper workplace behavior.
“There’s not a lot of just esoteric, theoretical activities and discussions here,” Peggy Berkeley said. “Quite frankly, I think it would be a terrific thing for all teenagers to participate in. It’s very practical.”
DSAGR partnered with the VCU Rehabilitation, Research and Training center to provide professional job coaches, who were stationed at each site to help the students learn the tasks and stay on track. At the end of each work day, the job coach would fill out an assessment sheet highlighting things that the student did well, and what they needed to work on.
The students brought the information home with them, giving the families the option to share the feedback with their teachers for the upcoming school year.
“Everything they experience this summer will then go into their school portfolio and might be something that the school works on throughout the year,” Owens said. “It might say, ‘Well it turns out from this summer experience they really liked working with people a whole lot. I think we’ll design things that are focused on that.’”
‘That’s what growth is about’
Knowing that she is helping grow a person is the most rewarding part of her job, Owens said.
“That’s what growth is about as a young person, learning your strengths and your weaknesses and learning how to overcome your weaknesses,” she said. “And the more experience you can get with that, it helps you determine what you want to do with your future.”
The academy has been so successful the past two years that there are talks of expanding the program into a yearlong project, DSAGR Executive Director Terri Lancaster said. The dream is to partner with a school system to provide services to students with Down syndrome at a more in-depth level, she said, but a major roadblock to this ultimate vision is money, as the non-profit organization depends on a mixture of donations and a small participation fee that the families pay in order to finance the academy.
The academy also focuses on providing a variety of experiences and skills for the students.
Twin Hickory Library Manager Hillary Burns tried to tailor tasks to a particular student’s strengths, such as alphabetizing and organizing books and preparing supplies for craft programs.
“Even if they decided when they were at the library, ‘This isn’t something that I want to do full-time,’ I still think that was valuable,” Burns said. “It kind of gives them an introduction and then helps them decide where their interests are.”
For Enrique Leon, store manager at Shoney’s, the restaurant’s first time participating in the summer academy positively impacted the business because it made their customers happy to see them get involved with helping kids, he said.
“It is important because even though they’re disabled kids, they should still be able to do things on their own,” Leon said. “I would love to do it again.”
Owens expressed her gratitude to all of the businesses that participated this year, saying that it could lead to future opportunities for the students.
“Without those business partners, this program couldn’t have existed,” she said. “They’re far more important than they realize that they are. And you don’t know where one business says, ‘Oh this wasn’t so bad, maybe I’ll call that job coach from VCU that’s actually been calling me about getting somebody employed on a full-time basis as an adult.’”
Leon remembers working with Erin Berkeley during one of his shifts. He had Berkeley working the cash register and buffet area, as well as restocking tables with napkins, salt and pepper and sugar.
“She was really easy to work with,” he said. “I believe the thing she liked about it is all my employees helped make her feel comfortable.”
The Berkeleys are using Erin’s experience this summer to continue preparing for the future.
“It’s all real life, and that’s coming, like it or not,” Peggy Berkeley said. “What this has done is given us a glimpse at realistic possibilities. We’ll do a little bit more skill-building before we end up out in the real world, but I think there might be a restaurant in her future, put it that way.”
