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HCE honors Steve Zimmerman family

Fayette County Home and Community Education recently recognized Steve and Sally Zimmerman and their children, Rachel and David, by presenting the family with the following: Certificate of a Special Award – In recognition of your dedication to providing a morally, mentally and physically safe environment through education of the home, schools, and community.

A “Homemaker”
…One tends to think of a homemaker as a woman, wife, mother, etc., which is true, but, in fact, it really takes the whole family to make the home a real home, both individually and for each other, Meet a family who has the recipe for a happy useful fulfilling family life.
The ingredients of that recipe are: love, respect and support for each others as individuals and as a cherished important part of the family, and the desire to help others by reaching out and ministering to their needs.
The Steve and Sally Zimmerman Family
Steve and Sally Zimmerman have accomplished this, along with their children, Rachel and David Zimmerman.
While each is an individual, with various interests, gifts, accomplishments and personalities, they are also a unit, a family bonded in love and respect for one another and their common interests.
They are caring for and helping one another, and serving where needed, be it their church, community, neighborhood or a Third World country.
They reach out to others through their lives, prayers, abilities and their special gifts, and each one has contributed to improving education and continues to do so in various ways and subjects. And just being there for someone – a co-worker, neighbor, fellow church member, student, classmate in need of friends – represents the very name and values of Fayette Home & Community Education.
Steve and Sally …
… have been married for 24½ years and have spent their entire married life in Vandalia. They are both in their 30th year of teaching.
Steve is the agriculture teacher at Bond County CUSD #2 in Greenville. He is the FFA adviser with a very active FFA Chapter.
The FFA chapter participates in various contests and has had students who have been state and national award winners.
Steve encourages his students to, both individually and as a chapter, participate in service opportunities, such as providing Christmas meals for families in need, as well as developing with FAYCO Enterprises a recycling program for plastics, cardboard and office paper, which was too expensive to continue through the local sanitation service.
Steve has also been an active member of the Illinois Association of Vocational Agriculture Teachers. Hehas served as the section secretary and chairman and then as a district director as part of the state leadership team.
He has been recognized three times as a Sectional Excellence in Teaching award winner, once by the IAVAT and once as a district winner.
Steve is also very active in Unity Baptist Church, where he serves as a deacon, teaches Sunday school and takes care of the sound system. He has served as the chairman of the building committee and was instrumental in the building of an addition at the church. He has also gone on several mission trips with the youth group and drives the church bus on these occasions.
Sally is a first-grade teacher at Altamont Grade School. She has worked on the Young Readers Night committee, language arts team and math committee.
She has spearheaded special projects like Flat Stanley and the eighth-grade reading buddy program.
Sally is also very active at Unity Baptist Church, where she teaches Sunday school and leads a sweet fellowship team. She also plays the piano every Wednesday at the church service held at the Long Term Care at the hospital.
Rachel Zimmerman is a senior at Vandalia Community High School who is very involved in the community as well as her school and church.
She has gone on many mission trips, including a trip this past summer to the Quad Cities, where her youth group evangelized at different low-income apartment complexes.
She volunteers at the nursing home church services and helps lead the singing, and has volunteered with The Closet ministry and the 6:35 Food Pantry.
In school, she is on the high school girls basketball team and a member of the school’s pep club. She is also involved in the student council, is a class officer and is the current president of the National Honor Society. She was recently named an Illinois State Scholar.
Rachel was voted homecoming queen this school year, which speaks well to her students and staff, as Rachel stands firm in her convictions of the right values to her daily life.
Her main focus, however, is the Interact Club. This is her second year as president of the VCHS Interact Club, a community service organization affiliated with the Rotary Club in Vandalia.
She led the organization this year to raise $2,200 for family med packs that were filled with hygiene products and distributed them to Third World countries.
Along with international projects, she has also led the club with many community projects, including the local hospital’s 5K. She has also help put together cake drives at the school for the 6:35 Food Pantry, so people can have a birthday cake when their birthday comes around.
Rachel plans to attend Indiana State University and major in dietetics. She wants to be a registered dietician in a children’s hospital. Upholding the family’s tradition, she will be teaching others about the importance of a healthy and safe diet.
David Zimmerman is has a double majoring in English education and theatre performance at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
He is continuing his family’s living standards by contributing to the school and the community he is now living in while still contributing to Fayette County and Vandalia.
He is very involved in leadership at SIUE and in the community of Vandalia.
At SIUE, he is the vice president of the Student Experimental Theatre Organization, which produces two full-length productions every year, independently from the Department of Theatre and Dance. These productions are directed, designed and acted by the students. David will direct the spring production.
David also helps to produce two one-act festivals and several other events through the organization as well, to give all SIUE students the opportunity to participate in theatre on campus.
In 2017, he received the William Best Actor award for performance from the SIUE Friends of Theatre and Dance. He is a former resident assistant at SIUE and helped build a community of residents and produce educational programming for two years.
And Yet Another “Classroom”…
This summer, David worked at the Vandalia Statehouse State Historic Site and helped bring back the annual Grande Levée, at which period artisans demonstrate their crafts on the Statehouse lawn.
He spent the summer working as the Statehouse’s historic interpreter and gave tours to people from all over the world.
He was also able to start his own program titled, “Statehouse Story Time,” which averaged 50-75 children every week. Each week, children listened to a story and participated in a corresponding craft or activity, from planting seeds to making homemade ice cream.
David planned the story times and chose subjects to interest the children, and did so successfully. One such subject was Abe Lincoln’s childhood, which was not only interesting, as told by David, but also visually enticing, as he described and showed some of the toys with which young Lincoln would have played.
Many other activities were held for the children, as well as the adults who were also drawn to the educational events. David provided information and a schedule for the local newspapers and radio announcements.
David even had local schoolteachers on board to help teach the children about Vandalia and Fayette County’s local history and about the importance of the involvement of community in the early days of Lincoln’s political and law careers, which led to him becoming the president of the United States.
David is a Golden Apple Scholar of Illinois. The Golden Apply Scholars Program is committed to putting educated and prepared teachers in schools of need by agreeing to teach within the state for at least five years. Through the program, he has taken classes with award-winning teachers and taught in a variety of classrooms from summer schools in the Chicago area to English class in Juvenile detention centers.
Education…
… seems to be the calling for the Zimmerman family, but most likely it does not rate above the words family, togetherness, love, respect and support for one another, which is also being taught to other by their example.
 

Steve & Sally Zimmerman and their children, David and Rachel

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