Teacher Stories: Nicole Koopman, Special Education Teacher at Crawford Rodriguez School in Jackson School District, New Jersey
I go down with Minister Steve and serve the homeless over in Lakewood Square. I’ve been volunteering with him for at least 10 years now.
I also work with another organization called Amanda’s Angels. That is an organization that a friend of mine, Brian, started. He worked as security and basically as a bouncer, and all other kinds of stuff. One of his coworkers passed away. Her name was Amanda. She loved children, and to give back in her name, we basically adopted local families to give them a Christmas that they would never forget. We’ve brought Batman over people’s houses, Santa, and we pretty much get any and everything on a child’s and family’s wish list. Anything extra, we wrap those presents, and we bring them to Minister Steve on Christmas, and we’ll give them out to the kids there.
With the food, everybody brings a dish. Sometimes it’s a church that will donate. This time, we have one of the churches bringing all the turkeys, and we all bring the sides and everything like that. Minister Steve has different tables, like, you know, boys, zero to four, girls, four to six. We also give out on Three Kings Day. We just want to make sure everybody’s included.
The turnout to these events is, I would say, 70 to 100 people. I’ll make sure that I bring extra aluminum foil so we can wrap the plates with leftovers. A lot of times, people will ask for extras to bring home. And of course, we cannot ever turn anybody else away. I do speak about it a lot in the classroom. I do a lot of social-emotional learning lessons to always make sure that you help each other.
Interview by Gregory Andrus
Portraits of the Jersey Shore
