Last week, Science 7 enrichment students got a lesson they won't soon forget — one that swapped textbook diagrams for tablecloths, posters, and a trip to the class café.

The creative unit was the brainchild of Ms. Refino, who transformed her classroom into a coffee shop-inspired learning environment to help students explore cell biology through an unexpected metaphor: Starbucks. With a little help from East Rockaway High School's life skills students, the lesson became something much more than a science class.

Walking into the room, students found tables pushed together and draped in tablecloths, setting the tone for a collaborative café atmosphere. Around the room, posters lined the walls, each one connecting a cell structure to a feature of a coffee shop. The mitochondria was compared to a breaker box, the nucleus to a store manager, and the cytoplasm to the air filling the space — each analogy inviting students to think critically about why the comparison worked. Rather than simply reading the posters, students recorded their own explanations on a menu, putting the connections into their own words.

Once the menus were complete, students earned a sweet reward: a visit to Café 217, a coffee cart staffed by life skills students who served up lemonade and iced tea. The collaboration gave life skills students a meaningful opportunity to practice their serving and social skills in a real-world setting, while the science students got to celebrate wrapping up the activity with a refreshing treat.

It was an inventive, cross-curricular afternoon that made cell biology a little more memorable — and a lot more fun.