Coffee

The Future of Coffee: Petrides Coffee Drone Delivery

As school lets out for the summer, we wanted to highlight an outstanding project completed by the earth science class at the Michael J. Petrides School featuring a coffee drone delivery!

About the Petrides School

The Michael J. Petrides School is a prekindergarten through grade 12 school in Staten Island, New York. They create an environment for learning that nurtures the “whole child” – mind, body, and spirit. At the Petrides School, they pride themselves by using alternative strategies of a laboratory environment. They engage students in active learning, develop self-esteem and promote, generate, creative, lifelong learners!

About the Coffee Drone Delivery

Creativity and innovation are the core of what makes the Petrides School so special. The teachers here come up with innovative ways to connect their learners with the lessons. Three of the Petrides School teachers, Mr. A. Rod, Mr. C. Rod and Mr. Campbell, recently made an earth science lesson that is the perfect example of this creativity and innovation in action.

For this lesson, the students were told, as part of a made up background story, that the United Nations was interested in placing a coffee farm on the Petrides School campus. First, the students researched the historic, economic, and cultural ties to specialty coffee. Then they had to create topographic maps of the Petrides School hill to map out a location for this coffee farm.

Finally, they ended the lesson with a coffee drone delivery demonstration! The drone pilot was a student who holds his FAA remote sUAS pilot certificate. Did you know the Petrides school has their very own drone science class? This is how this student trained and obtained this certificate.

The Future of Coffee at the Petrides School

We were happy to partner with the Petrides School on this lesson and give them some inside access to the industry. Students lit up when they held green coffee beans from countries such as Mexico, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Brazil and other parts of the world.

Eventually, the Stem Academy at the Petrides School will create a full curriculum around the production of the specialty coffee seed to cup process. Students and teachers want to take this a step further and even have a vision of a Petrides School specialty coffee brand that is student run.

We know that the future for these students is bright and can’t wait to see them take the specialty coffee industry by storm!