January 2016 Staff Above & Beyond

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January 2016 Staff Above & Beyond

Calendar-IconJanuary 8, 2016

The following staff were nominated for the January Above & Beyond Awards.  Winners of the gift card drawing were Leah Hirschauer, Kacie Smith and Lori Struyk.  Great work, all of you! 

Betsy Weiss - I have taken Betsy's caseload as she moved to a new position and she has been nothing short of amazing in helping me to settle in!  I can't thank her enough for all the extra time she puts in to help me with her former families! 

Leah Hirschauer - Leah has a bright and sunny personality with a great sense of humor.  Leah shares her classroom with a Head Start Home Base two Friday's a month.  She is generous with her classroom supplies.  Leah gives extra pieces from her art projects to the Home Visitor, so the Home Base children can try out newly learned skills too. 

Vicki Holthaus - One of Vicki's large families in the center has been struggling with head lice for several weeks.  She did a home visit this week where she helped the family clean their house, drove to several stores to find and purchase the vacuum cleaner bags they needed, helped take furniture and items outside, assisted the  mom in making the calls needed to get shampoo, and went above and beyond in helping this family in need.  She spent several hours with this family because she recognized that they were exhausted and overwhelmed with the lice problem.  This family is lucky to have a family advocate as dedicated as Vicki!  Vicki works very hard, always. She has made extra calls and home visits - one of which lasted 5 hours!  She deserves to be recognized for a job incredibly well done! 

Melissa Johnson - Melissa has been a great role model,  showing thoughtful consideration to our neediest families during the holiday season - both Thanksgiving and Christmas.  She registered several families to the Giving Tree, and delivered all those gifts and food to them.  To sign herself up for that extra work during an extremely busy part of the year is going ABOVE AND BEYOND.  She is awesome. 

Kacie Smith - Kacie was a tremendous help in the classroom while the teacher was on maternity leave.  Kacie most definitely went above and beyond to manage in a classroom with an assistant teacher that had only been on the job for two weeks, and a substitute filing in for the lead teacher who was not familiar with the classroom at all.  Kacie not only did her best to make the children comfortable while their teacher was away, but also made me and the substitute feel welcome as well.  She did it all with a smile on her face and a willingness to do whatever was needed of her.  She made sure that all of our lesson plans were ready to go each week and that all our paperwork was getting to the right place on time.  Kacie is a Super-Aide, as we like to call her.  She is an amazing asset to our classroom and I am thankful that she was here to help all of us through this time period.  Several of the Williamsburg school staff have also commented to me about Kacie - how hard she worked and her positive attitude throughout the teacher's absence.  Kacie is a delight to work with and defines the term "team player".  Thanks, Kacie!  

Lori Struyk - Lori has spent countless hours helping with the Christmas Giving Tree Donations for Genesis students. She has created a wonderful relationship with our sponsors from AK Steel , starting in 2008, allowing for more clients to be served through the CFI giving tree by developing our own program at Genesis. Lori spends many hours putting together wish lists for our students and sending them to our sponsors and assuring that all the kids on the list get their needs and wants met. I always knew this project was time consuming for Lori but this year she has exceeded expectations. When our sponsor was unable to finish the shopping, Lori took the time out of her day to finish all the families wish lists. Without her time and dedication to this program and building CFI’s connection with AK Steel on this annual project, many of our students would not receive Christmas presents.  

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