The Redbird store is more than a place for students to buy extra snacks and drinks during lunch. This store is run by special education students in Christie Rickman’s and Jacqueline Barron’s classes.
The store helps the students with life skills and communicating with other students and teachers. Many of the students bake more than 300 cookies a day. They play a big part in running the store with baking and setting it up before lunch starts.
“It teaches them important job skills,” Barron said. “It gives them the opportunity to interact with their peers, and it helps them do things like stock shelves, inventory, and learn how to count money for people.”
The Redbird store has been an ongoing program for a long time now. The store has been heavily operated since shutting down during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This is my fifth year here at Alton High school and I would say it was probably open at least 10 years before that, so it’s been an ongoing program for a while.” Barron said.
Students rush to lunch hoping their section gets tickets to head on to the store. Passing out cookies during lunch had many hardships throughout the years, a lot of progress and errors to figure out the best way to distribute tickets.
“We worked really hard to try and create a system that will work for all students, so when we initially started it was just the stores opened and that didn’t work,” assistant principal Natalie Gordon said. “We tried dismissing tables and that didn’t work, so we brought a very elementary system which was tickets, that still is not perfect.”
Students have many favorite items from the store. Many students and staff love their famous cookies that special education students spend their mourning baking and preparing.
Senior Parker Cannon said his favorite item from the Redbird store is the cookies. The store buys pre-made cookie dough from Otis Spunkmeyer.
In addition to offering name brand items like sodas and chips, the Redbird store gives the students real-world work experience.
“It gives them job opportunities that they may not have access to, to learn valuable job skills to use in the real world,” Gordon said.
