Going to ice cream school

Wearing a purple T-shirt, 23-year-old Libby Faucett reaches her arm down into a chest freezer, taking inventory. With blue jeans, a warm smile, and blond hair pulled into a ponytail, she looks ready for a day of work. Faucett’s shop serves classic flavors: Cookie Two Step, Homemade Vanilla, and Cotton Candy. But she is not a typical manager, and this is no ordinary ice cream shop.

Unless U Scoops, in Vestavia Hills, Ala., offers vocational training as a part of Unless U, a college-style program for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Faucett has worked as a job trainer at Unless U since September, but she’s been passionate about teaching people with special needs since high school, when she served as an assistant to her school’s special ed instructor. Teaching practical skills gives students a measure of independence and allows them to contribute at home or in a job.

Unless U gets its name from a quote in the Dr. Seuss book The Lorax: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” When Lindy Cleveland started the school in her basement 10 years ago, her goal was to create an environment that reflects Christ’s love and where students are “cherished, celebrated, and empowered as image-bearers of God.” Since 2014, the unaccredited school has opened its own building, started the ice cream shop, and grown. Now, it has two campuses and 150 students.

Each morning, students start the school day with the Pledge of Allegiance, prayer, and a recitation of the Lorax quote in American Sign Language before rotating between science, math, reading, and Bible classes. In science class on the day I visited, students played “Bird Bingo,” matching the bird on the screen with the name on their bingo card.

Faucett said the hardest part about helping in the high school classroom was seeing students age out. Per the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), the public school system serves students only until their 22nd birthday. After that, they have to move on.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the school year or even the middle of the week,” Faucett said. “They turned 22 and we didn’t see them anymore.” In high school, she wondered: “What’s next for them when they age out?”

Some Christian colleges have programs for adults with developmental disabilities, but because they are residential programs, they require a level of independence that many of Unless U’s students don’t have. Unless U’s students live with their family members or in group homes and commute to school. And while most college programs are time-bound, Unless U functions as a long-term landing place.

Unless U Scoops is one of the ways the school teaches life and social skills—including how to greet a stranger. Regan Nance, a 35-year-old ice cream shop employee, has been a student at the school for six years. Wearing the University of Alabama’s logo on his polo shirt, belt, and Apple watch band, he introduces himself by saying, “I’m a sports guy. My top three are baseball, basketball, and tennis. Yes, even tennis, if you can believe it.”

Nance takes pride in his ice cream job. He wasn’t scheduled to work until 2:30, but at 12:45 he was in the shop, setting up for its 1 o’clock opening. He unstacked cotton-candy pink and blue chairs around matching tables. He took the lids off the ice cream containers and set the display cones on the counter.

His favorite part of the job? “It’s a place where you can tell people about Jesus every day,” he says.

It’s hard not to have fun in an ice cream shop, but Nance has faced some of the challenges: Kids sometimes ask for a lot of samples, and it’s difficult to greet everyone warmly when the shop gets busy. Preparing for the food safety test is another challenge. (The framed food safety certificate behind the counter boasts a “100” score).

Lindsay Davis and Allen DeVore entered Unless U Scoops a few minutes before the 1 o’clock shift. They clipped name tags onto their aprons and checked the schedule for their assignment. DeVore preferred Davis’ role for the day, scooper, over his, running the cash register. He took his position behind the ice cream, insisting “I’m the boss.”

Davis pointed to the schedule and told him, “You’re not the boss. Libby is.” As they went back and forth, Faucett looked up with a patient smile from the board games she was setting out. “You two bicker at the beginning of every shift,” she said. She joined them behind the counter to check the schedule and clear up the confusion.

For Faucett, job training means being there for the highs and lows. She ties aprons, mediates conflict, and teaches practical skills like good hand-­washing and speaking loudly enough for customers to hear.

Outside the ice cream shop, students take field trips, grow sweet potatoes in a neighboring church garden, and participate in a basketball team and a cheer squad. Some students will use the skills they learn at Unless U in other jobs. Davis works at an AMC movie theater checking tickets and in the jaguar exhibit at the Birmingham Zoo. Nance works at Bitty and Beau’s, a coffee shop 3 miles away.

Faucett sees teaching work skills to an often-overlooked group as recognizing the dignity of being made in God’s image. “The Lord has wired us to work—that applies to everyone!”

—Stephanie Greer is a writer in Jackson, Miss., and ­graduate of the World Journalism Institute