Senator Honors Hopatcong Teacher

The awards keep rolling in for Danielle Kovach.

The Hopatcong teacher received the Evangelina Menendez Trailblazer Award at the Second Annual Women of Distinction Awards at Middlesex County College on Monday night. About 400 people watched Kovach accept the honor, named after Sen. Robert Menendez's mother.

"Although I have never met Evangelina Menendez, I know that we share something in common: the bond of motherhood," Kovach said. I am a proud mother of three wonderful boys and I can assure you, very little can compare to the power of a mother’s love.

"It is that same love that I carry over into my classroom.  I treat each one of my students as my own child.  And I know that they feel that love because I am accidentally called mom at least once a day by one of my students.

"Education is so much more that reading, writing and arithmetic.  It is also making sure that my students know that they are loved, respected and invaluable, just the way they are."

Kovach, a Tulsa Trail third-grade special education teacher, was named New Jersey's 2010-2011 Teacher of the Year in October.

Other award recipients included Kathleen DiChiara, president and CEO of Community FoodBank of NJ; Major General Maria Falca-Dodson, New Jersey Air National Guard commander; Zulima V. Farber, member of Lowenstein Sandler PC; Jeannine LaRue, senior vice president of The Kaufman Zita Group; and Janet Sharma, executive director of the Volunteer Center of Bergen County. Alice Stokes Paul, a woman's rights advocate who died in 1997, was also honored