Author Archives: Hayley Bifulco

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West Hempstead High School Accommodates Increasing Number of ELL Students

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The halls of West Hempstead High School fill with under 1,000 students off to their lockers and classrooms before the next bell that will ring in four minutes. A few freshmen scurry through the junior hallway with their heavy backpacks and some seniors carry a single notebook as they meander to class. Black, white, Asian and Hispanic faces weave into one another as the hall splits by flow of traffic.

Loud voices, laughter and chatter fade in and out with footsteps and suddenly cease when the bell rings. Many languages are spoken among the student body, but not all are bilingual. Increasingly each year, West Hempstead High School enrolls non-English speaking students who move to the district from countries such as El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Dominican Republic.

With a tight budget and limited resources, the faculty tries to accommodate the needs of English Language Learners, otherwise known as ELL students, and help them keep up with the rest of their peers, pass state tests and graduate on time.

“[They come from] Central America, El Salvador, and there’s no English language. None. It’s scary,” English teacher Jared Kufta said. In 2012 the West Hempstead school district released a final report that included a demographic analysis of the community. It showed from 2000-2010 there was a decline in the white population, from 75.4 percent to 63.4 percent, and an approximately equal rise in the Hispanic population, from 4 percent to 17.3 percent, along with an increase in all other ethnicities. “The school district’s enrollment reflects the community’s ethnic distribution,” the report stated. With 1998-2009 data from the New York State Education Department, the West Hempstead report displayed a similar pattern among the student population of the district in contrast to the community population with a decrease in the white students, from 71.3 percent to 48 percent, an increase in Hispanic students, from 13.5 percent to 27 percent, and the other ethnicities of students growing. West Hempstead High School, alone, is following the same trend of diversity. The NYSED released the enrollment demographics for just the high school this year. For the 2012-2013 school year, 51 percent of high school students were white, 25 percent were Hispanic, 17 percent were black, and 6 percent were Asian/other.

As the rate of Hispanic students, not all ELL, grows so does the rate for non-English speaking students who are placed in the state-required classes, such as Kufta’s English class. Kufta thinks of one Hispanic student who is expected to take the English Regents despite her inability to read, write or speak in English.

Kufta’s students are reading The Great Gatsby and he explained that Fitzgerald’s novel can be a “complicated text” with some tough vocabulary for the average English speaker. He said while teaching about the novel, a non-English speaking student named Crystal sits quietly at her desk.

“Sweetest kid ever,” Kufta said. But she speaks “zero English whatsoever, I mean zero.” Without a translator by his side, Kufta turns to drawing out pictures and printing out translations all for her. He teaches his class with a co-teacher because it is also an inclusion class for special-ed students. His co-teacher does not speak Spanish either, so sometimes he depends on the other students to help Crystal understand what is happening in class.

“Gotta lean on kids that have a different skill set than I have… and they’re more than willing [to help],” Kufta said. He’ll ask an English-speaking student with Spanish competence to try to explain to Crystal what the class is doing.

Kufta recognizes the small victories when Crystal smiles and says, “Oh! Oh!” after finally making a comprehended connection. Kufta and Crystal share a moment of relief in this success.

These time-consuming efforts to make illustrations and translations for students, like Crystal, to understand some instructions aren’t enough to equip them for the English Regents and other English Language Arts state tests that can only be taken in English. “It’s going to be on us to get them to pass these Regents exams, to meet the state’s standards and the Common Core standards… because at the end of the day all anybody cares about are the numbers that are printed in Newsday,” Kufta said. “There will be no asterisk in the paper saying, ‘Well the…insert number here… of kids who failed this…have English as a second language or don’t speak English at all.’” In the 2012-2013 school year, seven students that are “limited English proficient” took the English Regents according to NYSED’s report. Approximately three of them scored over a 65, two scored between 55-64 and the other two scored below 55. No one scored above an 85. Out of all 241 high school students that took this exam, 2 percent scored below a 55, making that about five students, two of which are ELL.

NYSED permits some tests to be translated in languages other than English. Regents exams for math, science and social studies are offered in Chinese, Haitian Creole, Korean, Russian and Spanish, according to NYSED, for those are the most commonly-spoken languages in the state. For elementary- to middle school-aged students similar language alternatives are offered for state tests in those core subjects. Although translated state tests are offered, ELL students still need to take and pass the relevant classes taught by an English-speaking teacher.

“Last year I had an entire… Algebra Workshop [class]…and it was all ELL,” math teacher Melissa Benson said. Benson has been working at the high school for over 17 years and noticed the increase of ELL students around 2010. Benson said at first it was “crazy” the amount of ELL students coming in and now “you come to expect it.”

ELL teachers in West Hempstead High School “co-teach” Algebra and Living Environment for students in any of the three ELL levels, high school counselor Donna Seeberger said. Although state testing in these subjects are offered in Spanish, the ELL co-teacher is there to help the students “acquire the English language.”

Benson referred to another math teacher having a class of 29 kids that don’t speak English. “So it’s like an algebra class taught by a math teacher and the ELL teacher. But it’s not enough,” Benson said. In order to meet state requirements for graduation, new students are “given credit for high school coursework that they have previously completed and have documentation for,” Seeberger explained. Although given credit and placed in Benson’s algebra class, “some of them never heard of an integer, can’t multiply, can’t divide, can’t add,” Benson said.

West Hempstead has revised their ELL program in the last two years, Seeberger said as it had been explained to her by Kathleen O’Farrell, the district ELL director and English department director in the high school. There are three levels to ELL with level one being for beginners. At this level students are scheduled for a three-period block with an ELL teacher to focus on learning English. The ELL teacher joins them in the Algebra and Living Environment classes for all three levels.

“The district offers professional development to teachers and has resources available for teachers including an ELL consultant,” Seeberger said. One resource is the utilization of the SIOP Model, which stands for Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol. The Center for Applied Linguistics calls SIOP “a research-based and validated instructional model that has proven effective in addressing the academic needs of English learners throughout the United States.” The hired ELL consultant coaches and works with the teachers to help them with the SIOP methodology.

“District wide we have hired three new ELL teachers this year,” Seeberger said. While the district receives Title III federal money for ELL programs and resources, under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, new ELL teachers’ salaries are taken from the district’s budget. “The state is proposing a mandate for bilingual education and this will lead to greater costs for the district,” Seeberger said. Bilingual teachers in core subject areas would need to be hired in order to satisfy this state regulation if it comes to pass. “All students who reside in New York are entitled to receive a free and appropriate education. We follow all state regulations with the goal of meeting the needs of all of our students,” Seeberger said. ELL students, though growing, are a great minority to English-speaking students who would have to be a part of these bilingual classes.

Prior to working at West Hempstead High School, Kufta worked at a school in Brooklyn that had a bilingual program. “Every core class would be in a bilingual classroom. It would be with a bilingual specialist who spoke in Spanish and English and it was literally taught in Spanish, and English would be incorporated every now and again,” Kufta said. “But that was also three, four years of work before we allowed them to take the English Regents.”

At West Hempstead High School ELL students receive extended time on exams, can have the listening passages repeated up to three times and have translation glossaries, that do not include the definitions of words, for English state testing. “We support them as we support all of our students,” Seeberger said. “I think people are drawn to West Hempstead because it is a great place to raise a family and we have a great school system. The staff works hard to make that a reality for all who live here.” There’s a special meeting the night before “Back To School Night” conducted in Spanish for ELL parents. Any messages and announcements sent home from school, whether by phone or mail, are in Spanish and English. The strides to accommodate ELL families are small, but they’re being done. The structure of the classroom may be changing but the dynamic student-to-student and teacher-to-student interaction has remained the same despite the demographic shift.

“I like the diversity…I love the fact that West Hempstead looks like a school you see on television,” Kufta said. “It’s the weird thing about this school. It’s like a big team. You don’t see these clefts and these divisions amongst the kids in the hallways and the classrooms. You don’t see it. Everybody just kind of works together.”

Anson Chan: Gamer and Writer

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Anson Chan from Douglaston, New York prepares to graduate from Baruch this school year with a degree in Politics and Journalism.

“I like things that don’t involve math,” Chan said. The craft of writing has always been “the most natural thing” to him. While his peers, who excelled in math, complained about essay assignments, Chan never minded the task.

“Sure, they took longer to write than a math assignment or something, but it was much easier,” Chan said.

Chan writes his own column in The Ticker about video games. “It gives me an excuse to play more often.” When he’s not gaming he watches videos produced by Rooster Teeth, a short-film production company. They create short films, live action and animated, or films that use interactive engines from computer and video games. This company influenced Chan to work on video-editing of his own in his free time.

His dream job is to work for Rooster Teeth. They recently opened a news-related department and Chan hopes his journalism skills learned at Baruch will help him in the hiring process post-graduation.

 

A Muslim Leader in Brooklyn, Reconciling 2 Worlds – Response

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Andrea Elliott uses the timeline of Sheik Reda Shata’s life alongside a timeline of events including immigration patterns, changes in the East and 9/11.

Elliott’s descriptions of Shata and his neighborhood contrast with her descriptions of where he came from: the industrious N.Y. versus “the Egyptian farming village where he was born.” This contrast in the beginning is important because it sets up the greater conflict of the colliding worlds for Shata. Not only does he have to adjust to his new environment, but also to new people and new problems.

The different cultures carve Shata’s faith and his approach to helping others. Elliott writes about how some more traditional Muslims may be offended by his “liberal” ways and some “liberal” Muslims may disagree with his conservative roots.

The greater conflict of the story is about Muslims living in the western world while trying to live out their faith righteously. Instead of interviewing many Muslims struggling, or not, with this issue, Elliott centralizes on Shata, the imam. The imam is the mentor for Muslims in the East and the West.

Elliott weaves in Shata’s prior schooling and experiences in mosques along with quotes from a Muslim psychiatrist, congregants and a Muslim activist. She also adds in statistics about the number of Muslims moving to the Bay Ridge area and the United States.

Throughout the piece, Elliott consistently brings up examples of how daily American life interrupts a Muslim life from what food to serve at your business to seeing non-Muslim women in clothing that reveal skin and hair.

This story is an example of a profile with a conflict arc.

“Battle in Black and White” Response 11/13/14 (absent from class)

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This article is a good example of a conflict story. Writer Amy Fox connects a conflict of the past to be present today in the same neighborhood. Conflict stories need both sides to the issue and this is difficult to do if it’s an issue from the 1950s. Fox succeeds in capturing voices from both platforms.

She uses the stories her mother gave her about her grandparents’ involvement in civil rights issues. The direct quotes she uses comes from old pamphlets her grandfather wrote in. She quotes public statements of the chairman of MetLife Insurance as well as other writings from the 1960s about the area and how black people had felt about the discrimination by MetLife. Fox dug up old surveys completed by residents about the “MetLife exclusionary policy,” and researched a lot about each committee member. With that research she was able to get in touch with Dr. Lee Lorch who, at his old age, could tell Fox about his experience at the time she was writing this article. The source of Lorch is particularly significant because he is a primary source that was there all those years ago.

Fox tries to get commentary from the Stuyvesant Town property spokesman and then she quotes a 30-year African American resident that has seen the more recent dwellings of Stuyvesant Town. He said that the number of “average, everyday African-Americans” are “static” and that excludes “celebrities, black immigrants and foreigners.” This quote connects the 1950s to modern day. Although the law has changed, integration did not sky rocket. She concludes the current residents’ section with how most residents didn’t know about the “complex’s troubled racial history.”

The arc of her story is that the racial tension is not dead all these years later. I think the nut graf is paragraph four that starts with “My grandfather had photographed the same plaque 50 years earlier…” It connects the two time periods and the arc of the story.

Hempstead Lake State Park Branches Out Locally For Help

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This playground has been renovated with N.Y. Works' 2013 funding.

This playground has been renovated with N.Y. Works’ 2013 funding.

Money doesn’t grow on trees. Maintaining trees cost money. Hempstead Lake State Park in West Hempstead, New York, has learned to manage the funding they receive in order to keep the preserve accommodating and appealing to visitors.

Keeping the park clean depends upon the help of volunteers and the limited park staff. Hempstead Lake State Park revolves around three bodies of water: McDonald Pond, South Pond and Hempstead Lake, which is the largest lake in Nassau County. Hiking, biking and bridle trails cut through the park and around the lakes. The lengthy shorelines of the lakes and the multiple pathways require constant maintenance. The main parking lots, paved smooth this year because of state funding, introduce some of the main facilities. Multiple tennis courts, basketball courts, picnic tables, a newly-renovated playground and the historic carousel are funded by the park’s own infrastructure budget and supplementary money from the state.

This year Hempstead Lake State Park received $1.25 million from Gov. Cuomo’s “N.Y. Works” project, which gears to renovating state parks. The funding isn’t quite enough to consistently upgrade this large, multipurpose park after being subject to past state budget cuts. Local organizations and volunteers attempt to fill in the holes that state money and visitor fees do not cover.

McDonald Pond sits adjacent to Peninsula Boulevard and is home to local fishermen.

McDonald Pond sits adjacent to Peninsula Boulevard and is home to local fishermen.

In 2010, due to New York State budget cuts towards the Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation (OPRHP), Hempstead Lake State Park was in danger of closing. On a state-level, Dr. Lucy R. Waletzky, council chair of the OPRHP, wrote to Cuomo, who then had just been elected governor, in December 2010 saying that Gov. Paterson’s budget cuts would result in the closing of 88 New York State Parks being “the first time New York threatened to close parks in the 125-year history of our magnificent state park system.” Waletzky continued to write that the voice of New Yorkers pushed Paterson to restore $11 million to the OPRHP operating budget. She urged Cuomo to expand the following year’s budget to help restore and revive state parks. Cuomo’s “N.Y. Works” project is dedicated to spending $90 million a year for the next five years to fund state parks’ infrastructure. Hempstead Lake State Park Alliance is one of the local organizations that try to fulfill other needs of the park that the state cannot.

Chris Carter, founder of the Hempstead Lake State Park Alliance (HLSPA), formed his organization in 2012 as a response to the 2010 budget scare. The HLSPA is “dedicated to protecting, preserving and showcasing” the park’s features and initiating events, as stated on their website. Carter was introduced to the park by some friends years ago when he was in high school.

“People always joked about dead bodies and guns…found on the bottom of the lake when it dried up one summer. So it was such a beautiful and unexpected surprise the first time I visited that park and stood there with the lake in front of me. Right then I knew it was a special place,” Carter said. A body was found in the lake in the summer of 2013, according to News 12 Long Island. Nonetheless, the park has offered an outdoor getaway in the city’s backyard since the 1920s.

The Historical Carousel is open from early April to mid-October. It can also be rented for parties.

The Historical Carousel is open from early April to mid-October. It can also be rented for parties.

Closing the park would’ve taken away a slower world alternative from fast-paced New York. “How could you let 743 acres become a wasteland,” Carter said. Inspired to start a nonprofit, Carter researched how, filled out the paperwork and paid the fees. “We’re not a 501(c)(3) yet due to the money and complexities behind it,” Carter said. Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, as defined by the IRS, allows organizations to be tax-exempt as long as they are fulfilling one or more of the following purposes: “charitable, religious, educational, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition, and preventing cruelty to children or animals.” The HLSPA does not receive government funding. Instead, they go to Parks and Trails New York, an official nonprofit, “that has a program where they will endorse smaller organizations and allow us to apply for grants,” Carter said.

The first year HLSPA began, in 2012, New York State had their first “I Love My Park Day.” The state-wide event, coordinated by Parks and Trails New York and the OPRHP, encourages volunteers to come to their local state park to help clean up the grounds, plant and garden, restore the surroundings and make the park look new. “I Love My Park Day” occurs on the first Saturday of May each year. HLSPA was asked to co-sponsor the event that initial year.

“It was a success and had the largest turnout of any of the Long Island Parks. People came out from all nearby towns and were so enthusiastic, majority of them never ever visited the park and were amazed on how beautiful it was,” Carter said. Park and Trails New York posted on their website said for the second annual event, participation “grew by 100 percent with 78 events and 4,000 volunteers.”

At Hempstead Lake State Park, park manager William Brown said, “Usually we get over 100 volunteers for [‘I Love My Park Day’] and we normally do shoreline clean-up.” This event isn’t the only day for volunteers at this West Hempstead historic site and preserve. The park uses a community service program to bring in volunteers for general clean-up and raking leaves. Some volunteers come from court order community service for nonviolent criminals, Brown said. Groups such as the Long Island Arboricultural Association (LIAA) aid in taking care of the woodwork. The LIAA is a nonprofit organization that concentrates on educating others about appreciating and taking care of trees and shrubs across Long Island, according to their mission statement.

“We just got some help from the Long Island Arboricultural Association this year. They chose Hempstead Lake for their site, for 2014, so they donated about $80,000 worth of tree work,” Brown said. The LIAA does this every year for a different public-owned facility to celebrate Arbor Day. For the last 25 years they’ve “donated over a half million dollars’ worth of tree work,” LIAA President Celeste Richards said. They have over 80 volunteers of multiple tree-care backgrounds attend the event. They choose parks based on their immediate needs and the Arbor Day committee takes a vote.

“We plan a few years in advance, so we also invite the directors to the current year’s arbor day event so they can see what type work we are doing.  Most of them are wowed at the number of volunteers and the types of equipment that comes from the green industry and the work performed,” Richards said. For their 25th anniversary, the 2015 site will be Belmont Lake State Park in Babylon, New York, which is the place where they had their first annual Arbor Day event. Though the work of the LIAA was a tremendous help this year, there’s more maintenance than just the trees such as the pavement and playgrounds.

Bikers utilize paved paths throughout the park. Dog-walkers cut through the trails towards the dog park.

Bikers utilize paved paths throughout the park. Dog-walkers cut through the trails towards the dog park.

“The park administration does a great job, considering the limited budget and workforce they have,” Carter said. “The biggest issue for the park is keeping the park clean and some infrastructure issues. It’s a big park and not many people working at it.” Brown said they’ve been getting a lot of infrastructure money that comes from the fees that park-users pay to park or play tennis or ride the carousel during season. “But funding for park staff could be increased. We get by with what we have and we’ve started working smarter and harder to get by. It can be a challenge sometimes with limited staff, but we keep the place nice,” Brown said. Visitors of the park commend the park for its facilities.
Justin Bethany, 23, a pilot from Hempstead said, “I used to run there all the time. It was beautiful to run amongst the trees and on the trails.”

Asher Korycka, 21, a student from Malverne call Hempstead Lake State Park a “hidden gem” and a “surreal” atmosphere with the fishermen at the lake and a picnic along the shore. “For as much beauty surrounds the lake, the park also has a dark side…tons of stories about drug deals that happen and things that are dumped in the water like needles and guns.”

Aside from paying to park, when other local parks are free admission, Jamie LeGrand, enjoys taking her 4-year-old daughter to the playground with other moms. “I think the park is good, not great. It’s not my first choice, but I would be sad if it were to close or become unavailable for any reason,” LeGrand said.

Hempstead Lake State Park hosts an annual fall fishing festival of about 2,400 attendees. Brown said a lot of their park-goers come from Brooklyn and Queens. The adjacent village of Lakeview has their annual “Lakeview Day” at the park. Although without government funding, the HLSPA is planning to increase their work at the park next year.

This path forks off towards McDonald Pond and South Pond, as well as the dog park.

This path forks off towards McDonald Pond and South Pond, as well as the dog park.

“Our motto is ‘Bringing Nature back to the Community’ and that’s our main focus for the next year with doing events such as an art show, birdwatching, hike around the lakes and ponds and a kayaking-guided tour of the lake,” Carter said. After hiking the Appalachian Trail this year for six months, Carter has been reminded of what he has back home in West Hempstead and inspired to keep pushing his organization forward.

“It’s been a rocky few years and we’ve gone through our growing pains,” Carter said. “This park has so much potential and really is a blank canvas. It has an opportunity to be the best park on the island and to bring together communities that are extremely diverse in many ways. The future of the organization is a bright one.”

Witches Brew: Serving Coffee and Care

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Aside from the variety of teas, coffees, desserts and vegetarian eats, Witches Brew Coffeehouse brews a lot of love.

The decor separates the Brew from any ordinary coffeehouse. Dead bouquets hang from the ceilings and hand-made crafts of paper hearts and skulls dangle alongside. By day, the sunlight provides the majority of light into the Witches Brew. By night, strings of lights hang along the walls and windows. Victorian-inspired dim-lit lamps perch by some tables. Tea-light candles and a jar of sugar rest on each coffee table that is surrounded by ‘70s-dated couches and cushioned chairs. The arrangements are mismatched and positioned openly to one another. Everyone essentially sits together even if they’re strangers. It’s a place for people of all ages, particularly young adults, to connect face-to-face in an intimate and comfortable environment.

Witches Brew was established in 1996 by two sisters, Natalie and Alabama Miceli, “on a whim” because they wanted to give another option for people to go to that wasn’t a diner or a parking lot. Natalie Miceli, who was 21 years old when they opened Witches Brew, said it was never, and almost two decades later still isn’t, for the money.

“We were just so into the idea of it and we put that heart into it. That’s kind of what made it survive. I think if it was more of a money-making business plan, it may not have done so well. But I think because we really wanted something communal in the area where people could go and wanted to make it where it was different than other things,” Natalie Miceli said.

Natalie Miceli is a petite woman with long dark hair that includes a few strands of dreadlocks. Just a little bit of dark eye shadow covers her eye-lid and a long dog-chain necklace with different metal embellishments hanging at the bottom. She wears corduroy shorts, a thermal with a graphic t-shirt over it and combat boots.

Witches Brew is very popular on Long Island. Miceli said she couldn’t recall a time when business was bad. Normally there’s a line around the corner to get in during the night. Early in the day, twice a week, the Brew hosts meetings for Alcoholics Anonymous. They have been doing this for about 12 years and the size of meetings have grown to 50 attendees. Most A.A. meetings take place in church basements or community centers. It’s not usual to hold a meeting in a place as public as a coffeehouse.

“It started with my friend, who was really young at the time, and he was struggling with being sober, and he wanted a meeting place where it wasn’t so traditional. And he’s like, ‘I think [Witches Brew] would be a nice place for people to come as an open meeting because you’re a coffeehouse and you can just walk through the door and not feel uncomfortable if they want to just sit in, sit on the side, have a place to go,” Natalie Miceli said.

Miceli reflected on how most families have a history of alcoholism or drug use whether it’s in someone’s household or surroundings. She said that many don’t talk about it. “[Alcoholism has] been around me since I’ve been a kid so I’m very familiar with it and I notice how it would be pushed to the side a lot.” Having meetings at the Witches Brew has allowed people, family and friends, to open up and talk about their own addiction or of someone they love.

Not only does Witches Brew give a place for A.A. members to go to in the morning, but the Brew’s late night hours give them a social place to go at night instead of a bar. Miceli has witnessed the transformation of lives at Witches Brew’s meetings.

A middle-aged female, who does not wish to be identified, with a big smile, orange-painted nails with sparkles and auburn-red hair went to Witches Brew’s A.A. meetings for the first five years of her sobriety. She is sober for eight years now and works full-time and can’t attend morning meetings at the Witches Brew anymore. Witches Brew is where she got sober and it’s her favorite place for meetings.

“It had nice comfortable chairs, coffee was always good (because A.A. meetings are usually known for their horrible coffee), so it was good coffee. And there was a real family sense about that place,” she said.

The intimate connection existed in these morning meetings. The welcoming and relaxed atmosphere helped this woman stay sober.

“I would get my coins there because the meeting I went to Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we didn’t give out coins. So the Witches Brew meeting, you got your monthly coins,” she said. For each year of successful sobriety A.A. members are awarded a coin. The coins are a bit bigger than a quarter and come in different colors depending on which anniversary it represents. There are coins for the first 12 months of sobriety and coins for each year proceeding that. “That was a huge, huge deal for me. So I religiously went so I could get my coins until I reached a year,” she said.  She received her 24-hour coin there and the following coins for each month her first year sober.

The woman said that there was a lot of controversy about having meetings in a public place because some members were concerned with their anonymity. The group decided that if someone did not feel safe at Witches Brew then that was not the meeting for them. Nassau County has a plethora of meetings at more private places.

Witches Brew gave A.A. their own closet space for supplies such as the coins, the Big Book and other materials. She said that a lot of places, including some churches, “don’t want A.A. in them because they’re always afraid that you get drunks in there that’ll fall and be disruptive.” The Witches Brew always welcomed them.

“They were very willing to help alcoholics and addicts. It was great for young people because it’s a young place. There’s such a stigma with A.A.: that it’s a bunch of old men smoking cigarettes in a basement. And this was just refreshing for young people. They felt comfortable there and it had a huge turnout for young people, which was wonderful,” she said. Outside of meetings she goes there for lunch and loves the service. A place with an alcohol-free menu that’s popular among young people is “a wonderful, wonderful asset to Nassau County.”

Witches Brew invests a lot of their time into many other organizations that focus on helping people, animals and the environment. Since they’ve opened, they’ve given a percentage of their profit to numerous groups such as several animal rescue groups, Food Not Bombs, which fights poverty and war by feeding the homeless vegetarian- and vegan-friendly foods, and Coffee Kids, which funds the education and welfare of children who labor for coffee farms.

“Besides the A.A. meetings on a continual basis, we’ve not really obligated ourselves to any type of organization. We do a lot of our own things on the side,” Miceli said. They’re constantly giving to new charities and going back to old ones. Fundraising and investing time to those in need isn’t a once a year tradition for Witches Brew.

All of Witches Brew’s coffee, espresso, and teas come from “certified, environmentally protected… organic, and fair-traded” places. The percentage of what they give to these various groups come from the pricing of their menu items. When people complain about the prices Miceli tries to explain to them why a cup of coffee is a little more expensive at Witches Brew.

“I understand if you don’t want to pay a few dollars more for a pound of coffee here but I’m not going to compromise my beliefs and exploit a country and their people to carry a $9 pound coffee. You can get that anywhere else. But you can’t get that here because we don’t do that. You don’t have to support us, but I will never change what I’m doing for a dollar.” It’s never been about the money, but creating an environment for people to learn, connect and grow.

The woman from the meetings is grateful for the Witches Brew. “They’re a very eclectic group there. Very different. They almost look like, and I don’t mean this in a mean way, but like three witches…the mother and the two daughters.” People mistake Witches Brew to be a hub for teenage goths or people practicing voodoo. “I always thought of it as you can’t always judge a book by its cover. Because to look at them, with their tattoos and piercings, you might think they’re on the ‘dark side,’ but really they’re very kind to open up and help alcoholics and addicts.”

“We’re just trying to save life in anyway we can,” Miceli said. Whether it’s funding for animal rescue, feeding the homeless or holding A.A. meetings, Witches Brew is trying to serve not only coffee, but love.