The North Bend Eagle

 

Gross-Rhode graduates from NBC again

by Mary Le Arneal
Published 5/24/23

Chris Minarick graduated from North Bend Central High School in 1976. Now as Chris Gross-Rhode, she is ‘graduating’ again after 30 years at NBC. But this time she will be taking a different path.


Chris Gross-Rhode plays library bingo with fourth grades students during the last week of school. Gross-Rhode is retiring after being at North Bend Central in various positions for 30 years.

After her first graduation, Gross-Rhode attended University of Nebraska–Lincoln as a business major, with no intention of being a teacher. Halfway through she added education endorsements. She graduated in 1980, and her first job was at Tekamaha-Herman High School teaching typing with manual and electric typewriters. After a year she went back to UNL to get the rest of the classes she needed for education endorsement. She then got married to Vaughn Gross-Rhode and moved back to the Webster area. Gross-Rhode substituted for a year, then taught junior high math and computers in Scribner as a long-term sub.

The next eight years she taught part time computers and business classes at Metropolitan Community College.

“After that, I decided to see what the corporate world had to offer,” Gross-Rhode said. “I worked for a software training company in Omaha training corporate employees on computers.”

After a year she was offered a contract at NBC teaching computers and business. Gross-Rhode did this for 18 years.

When Dan Watts and Cec Hall retired in 2010, their position were combined and Gross-Rhode became the K-12 school librarian.

“I was ready for a change,” Gross-Rhode said. “I found I was as busy but not as stressed in the library.”

Gross-Rhode did library classes and did some computer classes at the elementary school. She also did High Ability reading classes for about five years.

“I really enjoyed that,” Gross-Rhode said.

She continues as the HAL (High Ability Learner) Coordinator.
Gross-Rhode has been prom sponsor for 20 years. She works with the sophomores as they do fund raising, but is just the junior class sponsor.

“I liked doing prom, as it gave me a connection to older kids,” Gross-Rhode said.

 

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