Soaring Valor: Episode One

On November 11, schools across the country celebrate Veterans Day by honoring and recognizing current and former service members who have risked their lives to protect our freedoms. In March 2017, 40 Grapevine-Colleyville ISD eleventh-grade students will have a very special opportunity to once again honor veterans, this time, World War II veterans.

American Airlines, the Gary Sinise Foundation, The National World War II Museum and GCISD have partnered to send 40 eleventh-grade students to New Orleans, March 1st - 3rd, 2017 for a once in a lifetime experience, at no cost for students or for their families.

Soaring Valor, a Gary Sinise Foundation program, teamed up with American Airlines to bring World War II veterans and their guardians to The National WWII Museum to document and share the oral histories of the Greatest Generation. To date, more than 150 veterans have visited the museum as part of this initiative.

This year, GCISD was asked to accompany these veterans to New Orleans as the inaugural group of students selected for the Soaring Valor experience. As the district was limited in the number of students who are able to participate in the program, administrators had to make a determination of how to select students.

To read more about Soaring Valor and how the students were selected, click here. To hear the students discuss why they wanted to participate in this program, click here.