GNA CAMPUS – Welcome to a love letter to the little town that could.

When you think of Nanticoke, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? If you ask the majority of my students, they don’t say a lot of good things, but if you ask the people of the town from years past, the answers are very different: a nice town with good values, great sports teams, fantastic restaurants, and a real sense of community. What’s changed? Why is there such a drastic view of this city? Why, like much of the rest of The Valley, are kids rushing for the exits at graduation, never to return?

As an almost twenty-year teacher at GNA High School, I’ve seen the shift in morale first hand, and it’s unsettling, to say the least. But what could I do? I can (and do) preach until I’m blue in the face about how we have the best staff, awesome kids, and a community who will give you the shirt off their backs, but it seems to fall on deaf ears. This is a generation that knows pandemic, poverty, terrifying crime, hatred, and fear that those of us before never had to experience. They need to be shown, not told.

I was fortunate enough to be welcomed into the 2023 class of Impact Leadership Northeast this year, and our challenge was to create a project that would benefit our schools and school community in some meaningful way. Improving morale and the image of GNA was at the top of my list. What started as featuring photos of successful GNA grads on a wall in the lobby has quickly spiraled into this: a page featuring forty-eight inspiring alumni stories from the past twenty years. They were mostly nominated, or in some cases, they knew they had a story to tell, but either way, their purpose was to show that success can look like different things to different people, and that good things can and do come from GNA.

If it sounds like they’re bragging, it’s because I asked them to do so! Each and every applicant deserves recognition for the things they’ve accomplished. I want them to serve as examples to current and future students: we can overcome, we can accomplish, and we can be more than we ever imagined.

Thank you for reading!
Amber Hyder