It’s the icing on the cake.

While students take notes and tests in fifth and sixth period, senior Sarah Decker is creating dessert masterpieces at Gigi’s Cupcakes. Decker is part of the Hospitality Services class which provides students with real-world experience in the hospitality industry.

“The whole point of the class is so can we can learn and try to get practice in the hospitality industry to help us, and make a decision on what we want to do,” senior Sarah Decker said.

For the first six weeks students earn their SafeServe Certification, good for five years, which allows the students to intern at places like Gigi’s, Mighty Fine, the Cedar Park Center and the Austin Steam Train Association.

“It’s not like any easy thing, it’s almost like a real job,” senior Joseph Aleman said. “I go and I help set up everything at Mighty Fine. It’s preparing me for the real industry, the hospitality industry, it’s like a real pace of what I’m going to go through so it’s helping me set up.”

The class is double blocked fifth and sixth period and the program admits 10 to 12 students each year.

“I’m looking for responsible students who are interested in going off campus and are self-motivated because you actually go off campus and I’m not there,” Hospitality teacher Jodi Garner said. “You work on your own and I’ll check on you once a week. So [we need] self-motivated, responsible students interested in working the industry with food or hotels or vacation spots.”

Throughout the year the students will rotate jobs and they can list the internships as four separate jobs on resumes.

“We learn how to work in a professional environment,” senior Michael Saldana said. “This could get me a job in the future wherever we are working, I could use them as a reference to get a job there.”

A benefit of the program is learning soft skills.

“Soft skills are basically skills that I can’t necessary teach but I can show you how to do,” Garner said. “Eye contact, shaking hands, taking the initiative, speaking up for yourself, advocating for yourself. Things like that I can’t give you a PowerPoint over, but I can tell you that you need to do.”