A bright yellow school bus rolls to a stop. At the end of a dusty gravel road, the energetic voices of the children on board begin to rise.
As the doors swing open, the children hurry to see where they are. For them, this is an opportunity outside the norm. Most of the students on this daycare field trip out of Allentown have only ever experienced the city’s surroundings.
Anais Martinez, a high school junior at Roberto Clemente Charter School helping with the trip at the time, energetically greets each student and soon begins a walk down a trail with the group. She teaches them about nature, where they are and what they’re seeing.
One of the students approaches Martinez and tells her she’s scared to see a butterfly. Martinez is sure it’s just because she doesn’t know enough about them.
Throughout the day, Martinez teaches the group about what butterflies eat, what their lifecycle looks like and how they fit into the ecosystem.
By the time the group finished their hike around the center, the same girl came up to her and said she couldn’t wait to go home and tell her mom about all the butterflies she learned about.
Before getting back on the bus, Martinez handed the girl a small bag of seeds for growing her own butterfly garden in her backyard. The young girl’s eyes lit up with excitement.
Martinez said after the students left, she cried.
The little girl made her realize that the feeling she was experiencing was a sign: this is what she was meant to do.
Through her job working full-time as the community school coordinator at Broughal Middle School, she directly helps provide resources and supplies to students, families and community members alike.
Kelly Simpson, the current eighth-grade guidance counselor at Broughal, said in an area with many financially-strained families, around 90% of which are on free or reduced lunch, the community school partnership is invaluable.
When the program first began in September 2010, its goal was to expand opportunities for students in urban schools, according to a Lehigh News article.
“Anyone can stop by and I’ll find a way to help them,” Martinez said. “Someone might ask for food, and I’ll help them find a resource. We also have a clothing closet, a hygiene closet and a mini food pantry.”
She also said the community school offers free or low-cost mental health services to anyone who may need them.
Martinez said part of her job is to see and understand her students as a whole, not just the part that shows up to school.
This includes providing extended learning opportunities, supporting parents directly and offering as many resources as possible. Martinez said it’s important to understand a student’s situation in order to help them as best as possible.
“They can walk down here and we create a space where they feel comfortable talking about what’s happening in their life,” she said. “Knowing those other factors that may play a role in students not showing up to school, like maybe tough-to-manage problems at home, is a big thing.”
Simpson said Martinez essentially serves as a guidance counselor to some of the students because of how often she sees them in the hallways and at after-school programs.
In between class transitions, Martinez can often be found saying good morning to as many students as possible. She said the way she expressed her love for them puts a smile on their faces during what otherwise may be a chaotic few minutes of transition time.
Simpson said helping others first is a big part of how Martinez operates, no matter how busy she may be.
Martinez said she builds strong and lasting relationships with many of the students at Broughal by always being approachable.
She said she treats them like adults, and by keeping it real with them, they feel more comfortable speaking and opening up to her. This includes helping them when they’re in need, a hug when they’re sad, or a snack or new clothes, if need be.
“We have families that are constantly being evicted, have food insecurities, don’t have jackets and move around a lot,” Simpson said. “They need toiletries, and they need pillows and stuff, and while we use our resources to see what we have here, we also may reach out for other resources.”
Martinez also said part of her motivation to help students and families comes from her own childhood experiences where she also grew up poor.
She said having someone like her in the position, who also looks like the students, helps them feel comfortable speaking with her.
Growing up in Puerto Rico, Martinez said she felt a deeper connection to nature, particularly after Hurricane Georges, when she remembered having to walk down to the river to get drinking water, clean her clothes and wash her hair.
When she was 6 years old, she and her family moved to Allentown where the dense urban landscape didn’t allow for a connection to nature.
Despite that, Martinez’s continued love for the environment and passion for conservation has led her to become part of six different community-based environmental organizations, many of which are based in the Lehigh Valley.
She also serves on the board or advisory committee for many of them, including the Lehigh Gap Nature Center, where she had first started her journey.
This past summer, Martinez became part of the NextGen Advisory Council for the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. She’s also on the advisory committee for Senderos a la Ciencia, part of the Hispanic Access Foundation, and on the board of directors for the Allentown Parknership — ensuring that public parks in Allentown are accessible.
In her sophomore year of high school, Martinez said her brother and the executive director of the nature center at the time, Dan Kunkle, started Color of Nature, a program taught in Spanish meant to instruct people of color of all ages about the environment.
At the time, Martinez said she didn’t even know what the word “conservation” meant.
Her brother had asked her if she wanted to help with the program, and she agreed. Before she knew it, she was educating kids on the environment by regularly leading walks along the trails that were part of the center.
Soon after, she ran a conservation camp for the students involved in the program.
What started with Martinez teaching younger students about the environment while she was in high school has turned into a more than 20-year relationship with the Lehigh Gap Nature Center.
Chad Schwartz, the executive director of the Lehigh Gap Nature Center, said Martinez was recruited to their board last year to be more involved with the strategic planning of the organization.
Schwartz said Martinez’s experience growing up in Allentown and participating in many of the programs the nature center had to offer gave her a valuable perspective on how to continue improving programming.
“She’s very collaborative,” Schwartz said. “She loves to bring people together, and she’s involved with so many different groups; she’s really good at seeing connections. She’s able to draw from all of her different experiences to positively impact people.”
Schwartz recalled when Martinez was a high school student in Allentown, interested in the environment and eager to participate.
He said she took the programming to heart as someone who was inspired to take action based on the knowledge that was gained.
“She quickly went from someone who liked nature and being outdoors to someone who is a local leader in conservation,” Schwartz said.
Going forward, Martinez plans on continuing with conservation and local action.
“Anything community based is my heart,” Martinez said. “I love talking to people, meeting new people, and knowing personalities. Being in the community is always where I see myself.”