Caleb A. Gallegos/ Hobbs News-Sun/ April 17, 2025
When you’ve been teaching for 62 years, along the way you’re bound to learn a few clever tricks — including how to use high school seniors to help senior citizens in a way that fulfills two needs with one deed.
Long-time Hobbs educator Wilma Brooks, who teaches at the Hobbs Alternative School, uses her students to make crafts, decorations and other holiday projects to give as gifts to residents of local nursing homes.
Brooks is the second-longest-serving educator in the state of New Mexico and holds the title in Hobbs Municipal Schools.
Walking into Brooks’ classroom in the Alternative Learning Center, its immediately clear to see the hard work Brooks and her students have put into the project.
Ensuring all 200 residents at local nursing homes get a holiday gift, Brooks’ classroom is blanketed in projects ready to go for the approaching holidays.
Embracing the school theme of “capturing hearts,” Brooks and her students are using bold animal print to make a variety of items, including wall and door decorations, poster cards with meaningful messages and photos for all 200 plus residents.
Leaving one to think egg laying tigers and cheetahs are running lose in the ALC.
A tradition of hers that spans back to 1970 at Houston Junior High, Brooks’ outreach projects mean a lot to her students looking to earn the credits needed to graduate, as well as to the seniors citizens who might not receive visitors or gifts and, most importantly, to Brooks’ long and decorated teaching legacy.
An Oklahoma State University graduate and award-winning teacher, Brooks started her ongoing community outreach as part of her degree in human relations and family living.
Throughout her many outreach projects, Brooks said she’s applied for grants, recruited volunteers and even worked through her summer breaks to ensure nursing home residents get a special holiday gift.
Brooks even said she’s never been afraid to pay out of her own pocket for the expenses.
“At Houston Junior High we would do a lot of sewing and sewing projects, and we would take the projects to the nursing home,” Brooks said. “One year one of my co-workers was at Desert Springs, and I was stopping by to visit her. We had donated some of those blankets to Desert Springs, and they were taking a resident out of the van from an appointment. As I was going in to tell her that’s a blanket we made, she grabbed the blanket tight. She liked it and wasn’t going to let anyone take it.
“My mom, we’ve never had anyone in the nursing home, but that was always a biggie for her when I was growing up. She would take us and say ‘have something.’ Even if it was just a bar of soap, she would wrap it in a pretty little hanky or paper, and I guess it’s just been instilled in me.”
Now helping a different type of senior, Brooks said her elective class is usually used to help students who might not have enough credits to graduate, get the last few credits they might need.
“Most people are here for recovery,” says Brooks. “We get underserved and underprivileged students who have been knocked down, beat down, and talked down to in their homes.”
Brooks said because attendance is a problem the schools continue to face, she usually gets a large influx every year of students who take her class. Some students, she said, like working on the projects while others are just eager to get out into the world. And now, Brooks has been teaching for so long, she’s taught generations of students from the same families.
“Now I’m having former students and parents of students of mine working at the nursing homes, so it means more as a whole. For the residents and the staff, because they deserve it,” Brooks said. “It’s rewarding when I have students say ‘Mrs. Brooks do you remember so-and-so? That’s my grandmother’.”
Brittany Gama, Director of Social Services for Desert Springs healthcare, said residents usually receive arts and crafts projects from students in all schools, and said the residents have come to anticipate and appreciate the arts and craft gifts.
“We have a lot of residents that don’t have any family, so it gives them something to look forward to. Its an uplifting thing and it uplifts their spirts,” Gama said. “We do what we can as employees, and adopt residents for holidays, but something that comes from the community makes them feel good.”
Gama said on major holiday’s the staff do what they can to make sure all residents get a gift. But the residents are still pleasantly surprised when they receive a gift on smaller holidays.
“Holidays other than Christmas, it comes as a shock to them that people actually care out in the community enough to bring them something. Usually they are very happy and grateful. A lot are very grateful, because they don’t have a lot of family. There are some that don’t have family at all, so they are just very grateful and they show their appreciation. I’ve never seen anyone in a bad mood for receiving something from the community.”