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Photos by Jon Anderson.
Katie Parham shows some cinnamon rolls she made in the bakery at the Renaissance Ross Bridge Golf Resort & Spa in Hoover. She got a job as a baker there after going through a Project Search internship program for young people with disabilities.
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Photos by Jon Anderson.
Cameron Crenshaw removes dishes off the dishwasher conveyor belt in the kitchen at the Renaissance Ross Bridge Golf Resort & Spa in Hoover.
Getting out of high school can be a daunting experience, especially for some students with disabilities who aren’t sure what’s next for them.
But a program for students with developmental and intellectual disabilities was revived in Hoover City Schools this year to help these students find a pathway for their future, and leaders in the program say it was a great success.
The nationwide program, called Project Search, puts students with disabilities such as Down syndrome, autism or intellectual delays into internship positions in companies to help them gain life and job skills and transition into the workplace.
The program in Hoover is a partnership between the Alabama Department of Rehabilitative Services, Hoover City Schools, United Ability, the Alabama Department of Mental Health and the Renaissance Ross Bridge Golf Resort & Spa.
Students who have completed all 24 credits needed to graduate high school are eligible to apply, so it’s somewhat like a 13th year in school, but out in the community, said Vickii Marchant, the program instructor for Hoover City Schools.
JOB OPPORTUNITIES
At the Ross Bridge resort, interns rotate through different types of jobs to give them a feel for the different employment options that are available to them. Some work as bellmen, dining room attendants, bakery cooks, pool attendants or do secretarial work. Others may buff floors, serve as stewards in the kitchen, set up and break down for banquet events or help with maintenance duties such as replacing light bulbs, remote controls or broken furniture.
Eight students from Hoover schools were selected to participate in Project Search this year, Marchant said. The interns rotated through three job stations, spending nine weeks in each role.
At the beginning of each workday, they gather for about 45 minutes in a classroom to go over their itinerary for the day and receive instruction on different life skills, such as accessing public transportation or handling personal finances.
The interns then go to their jobs and work about four hours, Marchant said. They get half an hour for lunch with their coworkers and are required to either bring lunch or bring money to buy lunch at the hotel, just like the other employees do, she said.
The goal is to help them gain employment skills and learn how to be more independent, Marchant said.
However, because the interns still technically are working within the school system framework, they typically get off at 3 p.m., she said.
The internships are unpaid. However, the goal is to learn the skills they need so they can get a paying job, Marchant said. There are no guarantees of employment, but two of the interns were hired for part-time paying jobs at the Ross Bridge resort before they even finished the program — one in the bakery and the other as a steward to manage a storage room.
As of press time, two more were interviewing for jobs at Ross Bridge, and the other four had obtained jobs with other companies by their May 11 graduation. Those companies were Publix, AMC Theatres, Outback Steakhouse and Kilwins chocolate and ice cream store.
“I really, really am so proud of what our young people have accomplished this year,” Marchant said. “They’re amazing young adults.”
PARTNERS
Marchant is employed by Hoover City Schools, but two job coaches — Kara Harrison and Zoe Hughes — are supplied by the United Ability nonprofit to help interns learn the ropes, and employees at Ross Bridge provide mentorship as well.
Katie Dumais, the director of employment services for United Ability, said a lot of students with these types of disabilities may be told they’ll never be able to get a job.
“This program tells them, ‘Yes, you can; you will be able to,’ and it equips them with the skills to get not just a job, but a good job with competitive wages,” Dumais said. “It sets them up for success.”
The Ross Bridge resort has been a great host site for the program, Dumais said. “The staff at Ross Bridge is just second to none,” she said. “They have been so supportive and welcoming.”
Jonathan McKinney, director of sales and marketing at Ross Bridge, said PCH Resort Hotels (of which Ross Bridge is a part) is proud to be part of this program. The Battle House Renaissance Mobile Hotel and Spa and Renaissance Montgomery Hotel and Spa, also part of PCH Resort Hotels, participate in Project Search as well.
McKinney, who has an 18-year-old son with special needs, said being able to work with people with any sort of disability is a privilege and said the Project Search interns have added so much to the hotel.
Part of the hotel’s mission is to show hospitality with heart and soul, and the Project Search interns exude that, McKinney said.
“They’re so loving, so caring. They greet our whole staff and leadership members by name and give hugs and high-fives with passion and fun,” McKinney said.
And their spirit is contagious, he said. “I think it’s been a neat way to enhance the culture of our resort.”
Marchant said some of the Project Search interns are really good about paying attention to details, and details are especially important in the hospitality industry. For example, the Ross Bridge hotel likes to make sure its trash cans are positioned in certain locations by the elevators and are clean and shiny, she said.
Also, “You will never find a fake flower here in Ross Bridge,” Marchant said. “They’re all fresh, and they’re changed out every week, and they have to be positioned in a certain way on the glass tables.”
Also, one of the interns this year had an incredible memory, she said. When school superintendents had a conference at Ross Bridge in February, that intern memorized a lot of the superintendents’ names by looking at their name tags the first day and greeted them by name when they returned the second day, she said. “They absolutely loved that.”
McKinney said the Project Search interns worked very hard.
“Their work ethic, their attitude, the passion they bring to everything they do — I’d love to have that with everybody who works here,” he said. “They do a pretty phenomenal job. … That’s something that pushes everybody else to become better.”
GAINING INDEPENDENCE
Allie Simmons, a 20-year-old with Down syndrome who was part of the Hoover High School class of 2021, was one of this year’s interns at Ross Bridge. Since she walked with her class at graduation, she has worked at the CakEffect bakery in Hoover and the Unless U Scoops ice cream shop in Vestavia Hills and taken classes at the Unless U day program for adults with disabilities.
With Project Search, she was able to do filing and sort and deliver mail in the human resources department, work as a dining room attendant and help set up and break down for banquets. One of her specialties was polishing silverware and rolling it up in napkins and refilling ketchup and other sauce bottles, she said.
She said she enjoyed all the jobs and the people she met. “They’re really sweet, and they’re really nice to me,” she said. “I made some good friends there.”
Her mother, Laura Cooper, said Project Search was incredible.
“I’ve seen Allie grow leaps and bounds. She’s not the same person,” her mother said. “I just think she’s much more independent. She’s more aware of what’s appropriate in a work setting and what’s not.”
Even before graduating from Project Search in May, Simmons got a summer job at Outback Steakhouse, doing things like polishing and rolling silverware. She also was accepted into the ACCESS program at Mississippi State University and will be moving to Starkville, away from her parents, in August.
Katie Parham, a 19-year-old intern who finished classes at Hoover High School a year ago and lives with her parents in Lake Cyrus, said she did some work at a food bank when she was in high school, but she had never had a paying job before.
The Project Search internship program at Ross Bridge gave her a chance to learn how to work in a dining room (busing tables, vacuuming and cleaning windows) and to work in the Ross Bridge bakery (making things like muffins, bread pudding and turtle pecan pie).
She also learned other life skills, like how to write checks, how to speak up for herself and how to do a job interview, she said.
She impressed the staff at Ross Bridge so much that they hired her to continue in the bakery before the program even ended in May. She was able to earn her first paycheck. “I was excited,” she said. She decided to save the money in case she needs to buy something later, she said.
Her mother, Jody Parham, said the Project Search program has helped her daughter greatly.
“She has matured a lot. She feels like she has a purpose every day,” Jody Parham said. “It has been teaching her to become more independent and self-sufficient.
“Her dream has always been to work in a bakery,” her mother said. “So this is just the perfect opportunity for her. … It opened her eyes to what her life can be like as an adult and see the next step for her — that she could work in a great environment, hold down a job alongside typical peers and be successful.”
