♪♪ ♪♪ -We just broke 500.

-Let's go!

-I do it to give back to the community.

The first year we got 212 toys and we thought that it was incredible, and every year I like to up the ante a little bit.

This year our goal is 2,000, and we're going to get there.

-It's kind of a hard thing to do inside the walls of a classroom sometimes, is really to, like, make the rest of the world kind of a reality for them.

Programs like Students Raising Students helps us kind of deliver that to students in a way that we wouldn't otherwise be able to.

-I just thought it would be a great way to teach our kids some functional skills, and then it kind of developed into this beautiful way to give to two very different groups of people, people who want for basic needs and people so used to being on the receiving end of help are now able to be the helpers.

Alright, and now we need to find some pairs.

-Our goal was to show the kids that by doing a little bit themselves, they can make a bigger impact, So they're turning the power of "me" into the power of "we."

-On this episode of "Classroom Close-Up: New Jersey," the charitable spirit is alive and well, from organizing food and clothing drives to collecting scholarship funds, students are helping families in need.

Our first stop, a holiday toy drive with Santa's Helper.

[ Holiday music playing ] [ Cheering ] -Merry Christmas!

-This toy drive started nine years ago.

Hard to believe that it's been nine years, but it started nine years ago.

The ROTC here did a program where they were doing Toys for Tots, and we kind of piggybacked off of that and we wanted to be the capstone event.

Welcome aboard.

We've already got a great amount of -- We broadcast live and play music and have people come by, drop off toys.

The first year we got 212 toys, and we thought that it was incredible, and every year, I like to up the ante a little bit.

-Thank you.

-Rachel, toy update?

-We just broke 500.

-Let's go!

This year, our goal is 2,000 and we're going to get there.

The sixth graders got out of school for a little while and came down and brought some toys.

We had the fire department here.

We had the police department.

It's a community event.

-It's so hard to even explain what really started it and why we do it.

It was kind of just like, just raise a few dollars and then boom, $3,250, just going into Target, filling up five shopping carts just stuffing them into the back of trucks, and my Honda Civic was filled to the brim.

I could barely see out my back window.

-Thank you so much, man.

Thank you.

He raised, like, $3,000, 190 toys, somewhere around there.

He has been an absolute godsend for us.

-We're still getting stuff off the truck, so hopefully we're getting closer to that goal that we wanted.

-♪ Silent night, holy night ♪ -We had our choir sing.

-♪ All is calm ♪ -The Silvertones performance was a huge hit.

-♪ All is bright ♪ -There's so many alumni that come back and contribute and continue to contribute.

-I graduated last year in June.

I've been doing this event since sophomore year, so it's by far, like, my favorite event ever.

I've just become accustomed to doing it, like, whenever it hits the summer, "Oh, it's toy drive season."

-♪ Tender and mild ♪ -I do it to give back to the community, first and foremost, to give to those less fortunate.

I can't imagine a kid waking up on Christmas morning and not having anything under the tree.

[ Indistinct chatter ] -My two favorite parts about this event is seeing the community come out and really showing their spirit and donating.

My second favorite part is the very end of the day, just knowing that every year that I've done this, we've reached our goal.

-♪ Simply having ♪ ♪ A wonderful Christmastime ♪ -The kids make this happen.

Their energy is what brings in all these toys.

-We are currently, right now, as of 1:30 p.m., 1,891.

-I assign a student captain for each block, to set up an event for a block and run the block so that I don't have to.

-It's enjoyable to see everybody just coming together to donate toys.

-Thank you.

-Have a good day.

I just wanted to be in such a great event like this.

Something about it just, you know, always makes me happy and joyful.

-I want them to take some ownership and learn some leadership skills and take control of the event, and they did a fantastic job today of doing that.

-So my role here today is to help out with the little kids and really help out with the Santa, getting him here.

It's very fun doing all the activities and helping out, knowing that it's going towards a good cause.

-Everybody knows what goes into this and how serious we take this.

The students make this happen, and this is the first year that I put students in charge of certain events, and they've just done such a phenomenal job and they deserve all the credit.

[ Wheel clicking ] ♪♪ -One, two, three, go.

We're gonna do a cookie and milk eating competition.

I have gathered nine teachers and ten students.

They're going to go head to head eating chocolate chip cookies and drinking glasses of milk, as Santa would do on Christmas.

And we're going to do a donut eating competition.

-I'm chewing!

-The big event is the little kids coming out and seeing Santa come on the fire truck.

-Okay, ready?

-Sometimes it's the lessons outside of the classroom that mean more than the lessons inside the classroom, and if they can take anything away from this event, it's just to continue to do nice things for people, really.

-Here we are, behind my right shoulder are 2,000 toys that are going to go to kids on Christmas morning, and it's going to bring a smile to their face, and that's what means the most to me.

-We officially have now hit 2,000!

[ Cheering ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -In addition to bringing smiles to so many faces, the annual toy drive is planting the seeds of lifelong community service.

Next, local students reach the global community.

♪♪ ♪♪ -We have cakes.

-Different types of cakes.

-White chocolate peppermint brownies.

-Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies!

-We made deep fried Oreos, 'cause it's the best-tasting thing.

-Tonight is our 11th annual Celebrity Chef Challenge to raise awareness about educational opportunities around the world and scholarship funds for students in East Africa.

-All these people are here at Hillside tonight because, A., they want to eat some really good food, B., they want to win the golden spoon, our grand prize, and C., they want to help get scholarships for students in Kenya and Tanzania.

-Come on in, guys!

-Students sign up ahead of time.

Teachers, community members, even alumni of the school, to be chefs, and they create these little, usually pretty high in calorie, you know, treats, and people will come in and then they tip the different chefs whose treats they like the best.

-There's a first, a second, a third place prize.

So all of this money will be counted at the end of the evening, and the winners will be announced.

-Today we have a brownie donut that we call "brownut," with chocolate ganache and caramel drizzle, with chopped pretzels, and then, we have a lemon donut with lemon glaze, a raspberry, and some fresh raspberry drizzle.

♪♪ -This is awesome, because you're getting lots of good food, and it's to help raise money for a good cause.

-I'm here to raise money for kids in Tanzania to go to college.

-This event, Celebrity Chef, is part of our SRS program, and in SRS, we raise money for student scholarships in Kenya and Tanzania.

There is one for a secondary school student and one for a university student.

-A lot of the money goes towards resources they need in school, just simple things that we take for granted here, such as books and paper, pencils.

-The students here want an education, and the students there want an education as well, just getting there might not be the same paths, but if we're able to make their path a little bit easier, that's certainly something we can and should do.

-Students Raising Students is a program that was started by a Bridgewater High School student after traveling to Kenya and Tanzania with me in 2005.

-When Jessie Soldivieri, who was the student who wanted to start the group was founding the group, we sat down and we talked about, what are we going to do?

How are we going to raise money?

And as the years went on, more and more students began to understand our goals and what we wanted to do to help, and more and more kids got involved and excited about what we were doing.

-The students really have a large, active role in the process.

Events such as Celebrity Chef and Forest Fest and many other things are things that they've wanted to see happen at the school and something that we've helped facilitate along the way.

-I made an Oreo parfait.

It's with Oreos and whipped cream and brownies.

-We have toffee bars and cookie bars.

-I have a kugel.

-A lot of people do chili.

Chili is really good.

Some people do meatballs and other stuff, but dessert is really popular.

♪♪ ♪♪ -The team to beat tonight is Team Bedazzle.

-Team Bedazzle is something to be reckoned with.

-We were on a streak for awhile, and then we got beat out a few times, but we're back, we're back strong.

-We're Keep Calm and Stay Sweet.

We've won several times.

-We've got four-cheese macaroni and cheese.

It's a family recipe.

It's been in the family for a really long time.

That golden spoon is ours.

-Right now, we're counting money.

We've developed a system over the years where we tabulate all the coins.

They're putting it into the computer, and then hopefully by the end of the night, we have our winners.

-Community can be defined as here in our local community or the national community or global.

-It's kind of a hard thing to do inside the walls of a classroom sometimes, is really to like, make the rest of the world kind of a reality for them.

Programs like Students Raising Students helps us kind of deliver that to students in a way that we wouldn't otherwise be able to.

-The grand prize winners this year for Celebrity Chef Challenge!

[ Cheers and applause ] Over the years, I have come to realize that our students here in New Jersey gain more from participating in Students Raising Students than the students that we are actually helping with scholarships, because they come to Hillside not having a clue about what it's like to go to school in other parts of the world, not understanding the privilege that they have to go to school, because they see school as a chore and not as an opportunity.

And when they start to learn about how difficult it is for students in other parts of the world to go to school, I think it broadens their perspective, makes them more compassionate, and really makes them better human beings.

[ Applause ] -Don't go away!

You're watching "Classroom Close-Up."

Yay!

[ Laughing ] -Coming up, stepping out of poverty.

But first, we're looking back at how the education community faced the challenges of learning during the COVID pandemic.

It's our latest installment of "Making the Grade."

-Nobody ever thought as a school nurse, I'd be working from home.

My role has shifted from more of a healthcare person to a teacher.

I am certified also to teach Health.

A lot of my time goes into my Google classroom.

Show me your project, Cas.

Can you hold it up to the camera?

-I'll zoom out.

-I'm teaching Health to pre-K through grade 4.

I'm not focusing on coronavirus at all.

I'm carrying on with health lessons on relevant topics.

March is National Nutrition Month, so I'm using materials from the USDA and MyPlate learning program.

-For my fish, I have salmon.

-Good.

-For my vegetable, I have broccoli.

-Good.

I'm collaborating remotely with my nurse colleagues.

There's a total of eight of us in the district.

We do touch base at least once a day.

School nurses are so important, not just now, but overall.

I've been a strong advocate for a school nurse in every school building.

I'm so proud of all my coworkers with what they're doing during this time.

We're all kind of hyped up about this, how it's affecting our lives, the changes, dramatic changes in our lives.

So just to carry on a sense of normalcy and be mindful and be aware is very important.

-Justin, you're going to come sit on the blue dot.

And Lana, you're going to sit on the green dot.

I find that a lot of times, people lower their expectations for kids with special needs.

Do you remember this story?

"Those Shoes"?

I have high, reasonable expectations for my students.

"I look at Antonio's shoes.

One of them is taped up and his..." But I give those expectations in a supportive way.

What's wrong with Antonio's shoes?

-They're falling apart.

-Yeah, they're falling apart.

I just want the world to see what I see when I look at them.

We're going to do an activity about things that you need and things that you want, like fancy black shoes.

We introduced this whole concept to the students by reading them a story called "Those Shoes" that does a really concrete job of explaining the difference between needs and wants.

I have four children, and my husband and I are fortunate enough to be able to give them shoes whenever they need them, but that leaves us with shoes with a lot of life left in them, so an internet search led me to Soles 4 Souls.

New and like-new shoes are given to people who don't have shoes.

And when I was looking up the information about donating our shoes, I noticed that the information they needed were all really functional skills that the students in my class could handle -- counting, bagging, bundling, sorting.

So that's where it all started.

What are we collecting, Aislinn?

-Shoes!

-That's right.

John G., wait for us, babe.

When you get the cart, you're going to push it down to our Soles 4 Souls shoe box.

Get our shoes out.

-Wow.

-Our shoe drive was three weeks long, and at the end of every week, each student took turns going into every classroom in the building.

-Say "good morning."

-Good morning.

-It really gave them an opportunity to practice their communication skills, and it also gave a chance for the students in the regular education classrooms to see that our kids can make a difference and that they're working really hard to make that difference and maybe even a little bit harder than the rest of our population.

We have lots of shoes in lots of bags.

What do we need to do?

Gianna?

-Tied on the floor.

-We need to put the tied shoes on the floor.

-We give shoes to people and we look for old shoes we don't fit anymore, because we help people.

-What comes after 30?

-31.

-31.

Alright.

Originally, I just thought it would be a great way to teach our kids some functional skills and to make a really tangible lesson on a global issue that we face, and then it kind of developed into this beautiful way to give to two very different groups of people -- people who want for basic needs that we take for granted, and people who are so used to being on the receiving end of help are now able to be the helpers and to give back to the community that supports them all the time.

Alright, and now we need to find some pairs.

Gianna has a pair.

Her shoes match.

-All the way around.

I work with the children on a variety of goals and objectives throughout the year, mainly fine motor and gross motor.

Obviously, they're using fine motor when they're banding the shoes together, but they're also using gross motor when they're wheeling the cart down the hallway and navigating through the obstacles in the hallway.

We've made such great gains with them just in this little glimpse of time.

-So we need to figure out how much it's going to cost to buy our trash bags to put the shoes in and to buy the rubber bands to bundle the shoes.

-The expectation for these guys was raised really, really high.

They reached for it.

They achieved it, and they've gone beyond it, and Soles 4 Souls has allowed us to push them really out of their comfort zone and really far, and they've responded tenfold.

Oh, no.

You have to do it.

I feel that I have definitely taken a back seat in letting the children shine and knowing that you almost have to allow them to do it for themselves.

The children are proud of themselves.

Seeing them smile and knowing that they accomplished such a big feat is amazing.

-Ten, eleven... twelve, thirteen.

-They were able to collect these shoes and donate to a great cause, but they were also able to participate in a project that gave them the opportunity to learn some new skills.

-Tell me how much those trash bags cost.

Justin?

-Uh, the trash bags is 2-0 dollar.

-That's right, and 2-0 is...

I think there are the obvious skills that they have developed through this project.

There are functional math and reading, workplace readiness skills that they've developed, which is what I originally had hoped for this project.

But they've developed communication skills, they've developed social skills, they've developed a global awareness that I would not have been able to teach them in any other way.

-Ready, set, slide the shoes.

-Our building resource officer reached out to the Voorhees Police Department, and they have graciously offered to transport all 1,200 pairs of shoes out to the collection facility in Pennsylvania.

So we were able to collect even more than we had originally anticipated.

I was 18 years old when I decided to go into special education, and when you're young and starting out, you have all these hopes and dreams, and over time, sometimes those ideas get dampened, but seeing what these kids can do and how much they're capable of, it just reminds me of why I started this in the first place.

I just see life and I see happiness and I see effort and I see people just wanting to help other people regardless of their own struggles.

-We did it!

♪♪ -People really do want to help other people, as we're about to see again in our final story this week, students discover the power of "we."

♪♪ -Who doesn't love soup, right?

Nobody.

It's beloved worldwide, and that's great, because this is a story that begins and ends with soup.

The story is timeless, really, but it happens to be the age of memes, so here are some soup memes.

Now, unlike most memes, there are deep levels of meaning in soup, especially homemade soup.

On the surface, soup is delicious.

It's healthy because it's easily digestible, usually filled with veggies, packed with nutrients.

You've got plenty of low calorie choices, and there's that whole chicken soup medicinal thing.

So if you're looking to do something really nice for people, serve them soup.

-It's delicious.

Everything here is so great.

-Soup-er Supper for Seniors is what we call it.

And it's Soup-er, Soup-er Supper.

You're going to go out and you're going to sign up on the list.

-That's Melissa DiClementi, Health and Phys Ed teacher who, along with reading specialist Alison Pallet, runs the Unity Club, which sponsors the annual Soup-er Supper for Seniors... -We're smelling that soup.

-...where local senor citizens are invited to come to Cinnaminson Middle School for a hot bowl of soup and more served by students and staff.

-We have faculty that make soups.

They bring dessert.

They buy bread, salads.

We also have parent donations.

The students will make some in their classrooms.

Our Life Skills classroom, they're making soup today.

Our cooking classes are making soup.

So the whole school has been smelling like soup for a couple of days here.

So they're excited to see their products get served to the seniors tonight.

And when they get here, they, as admission, they have to bring two canned goods that our club will then in turn take to the Bread of Life Food Pantry and also the Food Bank of South Jersey.

-We wanted to actually show the kids where these things were going, and we would take a busload of kids and take our canned goods and take our boxes of cereal and we would go to the food bank and we would work at the food bank and volunteer, and we would pack up our own cereal and they would be able to see our stuff that we collected and where it's going and the difference that it made in the community.

I love when the kids interact with the senior citizens and they can feel the love and they can feel how important it is for the senior citizens to come.

It's just really important to teach kids kindness and unity, because they'll grow up to be better individuals and adults.

-Tonight was really nice, because the students came out with umbrellas to walk us in that we didn't get wet.

That was really above and beyond.

That was really nice.

-Through this soup dinner and a food bank a few, maybe a week ago, I realized that I actually was changing the community and affecting it a lot in a positive way.

-This will be my second year going into Unity Club.

It shows who we are as a school and what we do for our community and for other people.

-Good evening and thank you for joining us for our annual Soup-er Supper.

♪♪ ♪♪ -That's delicious.

♪♪ -For the past ten years, our Unity Club has really focused on the ideals of patriotism and service and character.

So they came up with ten values, and those values were integrity, responsibility, respect, kindness, friendship, equality, tolerance, unity, pride, and trust.

And we were very blessed last year that our school was selected to be both a New Jersey and a national School of Character as a result of the efforts that so many of our staff have committed themselves to, and it's something that we're really, really proud of.

-It's involvement of staff members, and we also have staff members that used to work in this building that have come back to volunteer, to continue to work here, because they understand the importance of what this teaches our students.

-Every year we make shirts with a theme.

And this year, our goal was to show the kids that by doing a little bit themselves, they can make a bigger impact, so they're turning the power of "me" into the power of "we."

The food collections and our involvement with the Food Bank of South Jersey is just a small part of what we do for Unity Club.

And we will go on field trips based on what our theme is.

♪♪ In past years, we've been to Arlington National Cemetery, where the students have been involved in the wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

We have gone to the Statue of Liberty last year.

-We've gone to the White House.

We've gone to the Holocaust Museum.

And the kids are kinder when they're in Unity Club.

I think that the club has grown physically and mentally and emotionally.

-In all of our classrooms, we have a quote, and it reads like this, "Tell me and I'll forget.

Show me, and I may remember.

Involve me, and I'll understand."

And that really is what we're trying to do here as part of Unity Club and as a whole school at Cinnaminson Middle School.

-We continue to learn about the effects of kindness.

-There has been so many times since I've been here at Cinnaminson where the community has had to come together in crisis, in celebration, just everybody working together, and I believe that this town is the best at that.

That is what they do the best here.

And the involvement that we get from the parents, the students, the schools, it's just amazing.

♪♪ -That's all for now.

We hope you enjoyed watching.

You can always learn more by visiting our website, classroomcloseup.org and searching the video library.

And join us next week for more inspiring stories on another episode of "Classroom Close-Up: New Jersey."

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ -♪ Simply having a wonderful Christmastime ♪