Grads with Grit

A year after graduating from high school during the pandemic lockdown, Mariah Barrera is wrapping up her first year at Columbia University in New York City...

Sparta’s adult education program thrived during the pandemic. It offered new beginnings to a diverse group of students, including refugees, young parents, older adults, recent drop-outs and students from other districts...

A quartet of fifth-year seniors at Unity High School weren’t sure they would be able to graduate, until they met each other and realized that they could do it together...

Growing up, DaJa West always knew she was going to graduate from high school. But when she became pregnant, “some people doubted me,” she said. They shouldn’t have...

This potential future corrections officer knows what it takes to turn things around...

Ayjia Jones and her mother, Monique Williams, are both graduates of the Class of 2021. Their accomplishment comes after two years living in motels, searching for housing and pathways to stability...

This grad hopes to learn scuba diving and to fly an airplane, but highest on her agenda is to aid in the fight for her right to join the armed forces...

Approaching the end of her senior year, she is learning to grieve with grace and share her emotions through writing, after the death of her older sister in 2016...

On a journey from the Congo to Grand Rapids, faith, and the people placed in his path, have helped a Kelloggsville senior deal with some tough circumstances...

Six years ago hewas in an Indonesian detention center. Today he is a recipient of Western Michigan University’s most prestigious merit-based scholarship...

The encouragement of co-workers helped her discover Kent ISD adult education and its career and technical ed programs...

Godwin’s Ru’Quan Buckley was not going to let anything -- including a pandemic -- stop him from achieving his goal...

An abusive relationship could not deter this university-bound senior from excelling...

The daughter of Vietnamese immigrants, Quyen Tran was instrumental in elevating the work of the Asian Student Union at East Kentwood High School. She is now headed to Harvard with a sense of purpose and humanitarian goals...

Larica Brown and her father, Lorenzo, worked hard to make a better life for themselves in the United States...

This student went from principal’s office regular to class leader and role model...