A hearty Saturday Salute goes this week to Grand Island Public Schools and Michella Honas for facilitating the Project SEARCH program that clearly has been successful in helping youths with varying abilities find and maintain gainful employment in the community.
The school-to-work program has had to deal with many challenges during the pandemic, but the 2019-20 class not only succeeded, but excelled, winning an Excellent Employment Outcome Award for having 70% to 90% employment placement.
“What made this class so special is they were motivated to come to school,” Honas said. “Typically, I have to put in some sort of incentive to get them to come to school and strive for perfect attendance. Not this class.”
Project SEARCH prepares the class members for skills, such as putting together a resume and job interviewing and then guides them through the job application process so they can be successful in finding a job that they will enjoy.
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On the job, they then learn the skills they will need to continue to be employed and their work success can be encouraging to them in completing their high school education.
“My job was so easy that year because they were eager to learn, participated in class daily, rarely ever missed school and the relationship skills they had with each other and the remaining staff was so strong,” Honas said.
Since this is a one-year program, those students have finished Project SEARCH and a new group of students is being prepared — hopefully to also have success working in the community.
Looking forward to Harvest of Harmony
With Harvest of Harmony only a week away, we also salute the Grand Island Senior High and Central Catholic marching bands, which won honors at the University of Nebraska-Kearney Band Day competition a week ago.
The GISH band placed second in Class AA and its drum line placed first. Grand Island Central Catholic’s band placed second in Class C.
Now Grand Island needs to get ready to welcome the arrival of the dozens of Harvest of Harmony Pageant contestants and high school marching bands and turn out for the pageant on Friday and the parade on Saturday.
After taking a year off because of the pandemic, the Harvest of Harmony Parade is returning Oct. 2 with a parade theme of “We’re All Superheroes!”
The parade will be led by three grand marshals — Teresa Anderson of Central District Health Department, Beth Bartlett of CHI Health St. Francis and Jon Rosenlund of Hall County/City of Grand Island Emergency Management.
The parade will step off at 8:15 a.m. at Fourth and Elm streets, continue through the Eddy Street underpass, and then continue the route on Third Street. The route will be 0.6 of a mile.
There also will be a field competition at Grand Island Senior High following the parade.
We salute all the bands that look forward to Harvest of Harmony as one of the highlights of their season.