With three younger sisters and nearly 20 younger cousins, Michael Cestaro was used to being a leader. So it was a natural fit for him to become not only a teacher but also a chapter leader at his high school, where he organized efforts to help students and faculty hit hard by Hurricane Sandy.

As a high school student, Cestaro knew he planned to become a teacher. He gravitated toward history because, he says, “I liked the story of what shaped the world to what it is today, making connections from the past.”

Less than enamored with the age of the elementary school students he observed as a student teacher in college, he found his groove teaching 9th- and 10th-grade social studies to students just a few years younger than he was.

“When you’re 21 and some [students] are 18 or 19, it’s interesting, to say the least,” he says. “It’s definitely a wake-up call that you’re an adult now.”

After a brief foray into advertising at a sales job in Arizona — “Working in an office was not that awesome,” he says with a laugh — he moved home to New York and found a job as a social studies teacher at Rockaway Park HS for Environmental Sustainability, which was founded with just 90 students and fewer than five teachers. The “tiny faculty” fostered a close-knit atmosphere among students and staff and allowed Cestaro to take on multiple roles — including that of chapter leader, which he says required a “three-pronged approach.”

“You have to understand the frustrations of teachers, the expectations that the administration has, and a sense of what the union is trying to advocate for,” he says.

Advocacy took on greater meaning for Cestaro after Hurricane Sandy tore through the Rockaways, devastating his school building and the homes of his students and colleagues.

“It was truly a mess,” says Cestaro. “It was an experience I don’t ever wish upon anyone. I would say 50 percent of our kids were not living at home or were homeless because their homes were gutted, flooded or didn’t have heat. Many lost all their possessions.”

With his school displaced to a building in Maspeth, lacking books and basic supplies, Cestaro pitched in with the relief effort. He volunteered in the Rockaways, helping students and staff clear out their homes and organizing a fundraising effort to provide food and clothing for students.

“We did everything we could to help each other,” Cestaro says. “We had to do it to make it work.”

A year later, Cestaro’s school is still coping with the aftermath, with ruined athletic fields displacing student athletes and temporary boilers providing spotty heat.

“It certainly impacts the educational process, trying to facilitate a lesson when it’s 45 degrees in your room and the mayor tells you to just wear a coat,” Cestaro says.

Despite the overwhelming challenges presented by Sandy — Cestaro notes the best he could hope for was to have just 50 percent attendance in the aftermath of the storm — he is proud of his students’ 100 percent pass rate on last year’s January Regents.

There are two major factors in his success. One, he says, is the relationship he has with colleagues in his department, who “work together to build systems that overlap well [and] create a lot of vertical alignment in their classrooms.”

The other comes from that intangible bond with students he missed while living in Arizona.

“Without the way we interact with each other, it wouldn’t be possible,” he says. “They knew I was there to do my best to help them. Without the interaction with the kids, I wouldn’t do this.”