By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

Rhiannon Cummin, Learning Center student, is pursuing a dream to be a registered nurse by the time she is 20. 

She was nominated as the March’s student Best of the Best by teacher Sondra Hickert.

“I often stand before the board of education at Learning Center graduations to emphasize the things that students overcome to graduate,” Hickert said. “Whether it is illness, loss of a family member or some other life issue, we like to accentuate the challenges that the graduates had to overcome. But tonight I introduce you to Rhiannon Cummin who is a student who couldn’t overcome.

“She couldn’t overcome her passionate desire to become a nurse at the earliest age possible. Rhiannon came to us less than a year ago, telling me she wanted to be a nurse. She wanted the option of working at her own pace because she is determined to be a working RN by the age of 20.”

She drives into Hays each day to attend the Learning Center. She pays for her own gas, earned from a part-time job she works in between her studies.

Hickert said Cummin has applied herself like no other student, completing her core courses for both her junior and senior years since August. 

“She is a friend to every student who walks in the lab,” Hickert said.

By May Cummin will have completed 17 hours of concurrent college credit.

“She has traded working the drive-thru for answering call lights at her hometown nursing facility as a certified nurse aide,” Hickert said.

Cummin is poised to enter nursing school three months after graduating with her class in May 2020.

“Society, not just the health care industry, is fortunate to have a citizen like Rhiannon Cummin who is forging her future industriously and compassionately,” she said.

Eva Junk, Lincoln and Roosevelt counselor, was nominated by peers at Roosevelt for the staff Best of the Best award. Roosevelt Principal Paula Rice spoke on her behalf at Monday’s school board meeting.

“Eva is just one of those who goes above and beyond,” Rice said.

“Too many times in education, staff members are asked to take on additional duties to help fill in the gaps to continue to provide the best for students,” Rice said. “Our fantastic staff steps up and does this because of our love for our students.

“One shining example of this is our school counselor Eva Junk, who every year is asked to take on more and more roles and responsibilities. These roles and responsibilities are accepted by Eva with a nod of the head and a smile on her face and a ‘yes’ all the while continuing to excel in every aspect of her core performance. This is what sets her head and shoulders above so many others.”

Junk is responsible for more than 650 students and families. Rice said having responsibilities between two buildings pulls her in many directions each day. She visits classrooms, teaches lessons, sponsors two student councils, checks in weekly and daily with students who need counseling, and eats lunch with students.

Junk also has taken an active role in building leadership at both schools.

“Despite being surrounded by daily stressors, enough to make most people want to give up,” Rice said, “Eva continues to be a compassionate, listening ear for all who are in need to help shape our building into the happy, comforting and joyful place that it is. Eva deserves more than a modest pat on the back. For indeed, she is the Best of the Best.”

By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

Jetta Smith, Fort Hays State University senior, organized an event Thursday on the FHSU campus, “The Power of She,” in which lecturers spoke on preventing gender violence, finding equality in the work world and encouraging women to be their best selves.

Smith, a communications major, is the reigning Miss Butler County and has logged more than 1,000 community service hours in the last year.

Her platform is to raise awareness of gender violence, especially through empowering bystanders to intervene.

Smith said the idea for the “Power of She” came to life after a very heated discussion over who was the best super hero. Smith insisted that it was the modern-day woman.

“The modern-day women has the ability to empower, encourage and enlighten millions of people around her,” she said. “So why do we as women silence ourselves and not use our ability to our full potential? I hope today when you leave this presentation you are enlightened, encouraged and empowered to speak up, to speak out and to know that your voice has power.”

A bystander can step in and prevent an act of gender violence from happening, can prevent an outcome as well as deal with an outcome, said Smith, who herself is a survivor of sexual assault.

Sixty-six percent of all violent crimes happen in front of a bystander, and bystanders are present during 29 percent of all acts of sexual violence.

“It can be something as simple as body language and you see something happening and you make eye contact from across the room, crossing your arms, changing your body language,” she said. “As a communication major, that was something that I took on instantly.”

A bystander can distract or interrupt, such as spilling a drink if you see someone in an uncomfortable situation with a person of the opposite sex.

“Choosing not to laugh at a joke … Intervention is not always about confrontation,”  she said. “It can be the simplest things such as movement or body language or just saying, ‘Hey, that wasn’t funny.”

There are four stages of intervention: notice the event, interpret it as a problem, feel responsible for dealing with it and possessing the necessary skills to act.

Smith explained our personal biases may affect our choice to intervene. She described a recent video she watched on Facebook.

A man dressed in rags was lying in the street. No one stopped to help him. When the same man dressed in a suit re-enacted the scene, people rushed to his aid.

“Why are we afraid to step in when we know we can?” she wondered.

Smith said there are a variety of reasons people choose not to intervene. These can include social influence, audience, diffusion of responsibility, fear of retaliation, or ignorance. Some examples of this could be a fear you might not be thought of as cool; shyness or fear of bringing attention to yourself; and the rationalization that someone else will intervene.

Smith related an instance she wished had intervened during her first year at FHSU. She was at a bar and she noticed a young women who was being pressured by a man. She said she could tell by the woman’s body language she was definitely not interested, but he was overly interested.

“All I had to do was sit at that bar and turn, and say, ‘Girl, I haven’t seen you forever!’ I have never seen this girl in my life. All I have to do is that simple thing, give her hug, the guy gets the hint and he walks away,” Smith said.

All you need is your voice and your body to intervene.

“The Golden Rule is to only intervene when it is safe for you to do so,” she said. “If it is not safe and an emergency, dial 911, call campus security, call another friend over. That way it is not just you in a one-on-one intervention.”

When Smith was a freshman and a sophomore, she was a student athlete. She used her influence to promote parties or trips with her friends.

“When the situation flipped and I became a victim of sexual assault, I didn’t think my voice mattered any more,” she said. “I did know I had a voice. But in reality that same voice I was using to promote those parties and whether we were going to Hays or not was that same voice that could have been promoting that one in three women will be victims of sexual assault.”

Power of she in the workplace

Dr. April Park, associate professor, spoke on disparities between the genders in her field of psychology.

When Park came to the United States to study psychology, more than half of her classmates were women. However, that has not always been the case.

In 1970, only 20 percent of the PhD recipients were women. Now it is more than 70 percent. The trend has been a increase in white women, and, to a degree, minority women receiving doctorates in psychology.

Despite these increases, the profession has not seen a correlating increase in the number of women in tenure positions on college campuses or in leadership positions in the field.

At the lecturer level, there are more women, but those numbers decrease as you move up in the academic ranks. Less than 30 percent of full professors in psychology are women.

Among the American Psychological Association’ more than 130 presidents, there are only 11 women. Of those 11, eight of them have been elected in the past 10 years.

Pay gaps are also found in the field of psychology. At a two-year university as of 2010, female employees made 80 percent of what male employees earned.

“What was a little bit more disturbing to me was that trend wasn’t really reducing, but it was actually widening in the past years,” Park said.

She said the culture and tradition in the tenure process plays a role. The makeup of the tenure committees and the leaders in the departments tend to be men.

“Also if you think about the high demands of the job to reach a full professor rank and you think about the work that has to be done in the house, and if women can’t find a good and work life balance, that is going to put them at a disadvantage,” she said.

APA is recommending women advocate for gender wage equity, encourage policies for salary transparency and promote leadership skills in women.

One factor research has determined that contributes to lower pay for women was a lack of salary negotiation skills.

“When you first get a job, the base salary is going to be very important because all of the additional bonuses you get and incentives you get will be proportionate to the base salary,” Park said. “If you are not making an equitable base salary compared to a man, then you are going to have a hard time reducing that gap.”

Park said she also thinks having a mentoring system for women is important.

With her own students, she tries to encourage them, but also urges them to readily accept encouragement.

“The female students I work with are very, very strong, they are so extremely talented, but when I encourage them, ‘Hey you are doing a good job, just keep on doing that,’ a lot of times they will say, ‘I don’t think I did it enough or I don’t think I did it good enough.”

She also encourages students to get involved in organizations and take responsibility for their actions.

“But as you do so be very gracious to yourself and other people,” she said.

‘It’s your deal’

Dr. Teresa Clounch, FHSU assistant vice president of student affairs and compliance, spoke to the group on the theme, “It may not be ideal, but it’s your deal.”

Clounch first gave this advice to a student who was asking for guidance about taking a job after graduation. The student was unsure if the job would be right for her.

Clounch found a few years later she was saying this to herself.

Only about a month after Clounch moved to Hays to take her position at FHSU in 2017, her father died.

“Understand while I was stricken with grief and thought someone who was such an integral part of my life, from whom I get my good looks and great sense of humor, has now left this world. Now I am in a new place, where people just barely know who Dr. TLC is. I go back into my mind when I think about that spring of 2013 when I told that student who was ready to graduate and step into a new chapter of her life, ‘This may not be ideal, but it is your deal.'”

She had to look at a world without her father in it.

“I looked for support from my family, my siblings, neighbors, my new colleagues her at Fort Hays State, my sorority sisters and everyone who was willing to provide me support,” she said.

Clounch said it was difficult for her to take support because she is a proud person.

“Yet, I knew at this point in time, at a new place and being four and half hours away from my family, while this was not ideal, it was my deal to work with,” she said.

She created a new support system.

“I also realized I needed to encourage others in this process,” she said. “I did that for my family; I did that for the friends who were near by. I did that for my colleagues because someone else had gone through what I was getting ready to go through.”

By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

Tyler Haas tries to teach his students persistence.

Haas was a high jumper when he was in college at Fort Hays State University. During his sophomore year, he was facing some challenges and considering quitting the team. His father encouraged him to keep working.

Not only did Haas find success in his college career, being named twice all-conference, but today he is an assistant coach for jumping events at FHSU. He has worked with several nationally and internationally ranked athletes.

He said had he quit he would have missed that opportunity. He would have missed the opportunity to travel and meet people — and he would have missed an opportunity to do a job he now loves.

“What the key to happiness is may be not always be chasing a dream of making money,” he said. “It is maybe chasing something in which you can impact the most people. In 12 years, I have been able to work with numerous students and athletes, and it has been a great experience.”

Haas, a Hoxie native, has been teaching at Holy Family for 12 years. He currently teaches math and social studies to fifth and sixth graders.

“I say I’m going to go teach. I’m going to go coach. I never say I’m going to work, because I enjoy both of them so much,” he said.

Haas was named March’s Hays Post Teacher of the Month. He was nominated by parent Shanna Koster.

Koster said in her nomination that Haas is her daughter’s favorite teacher.

“She says that he is not only a math and social studies teacher, he teaches about life. He goes above and beyond by teaching our children the right thing to do in certain situations and normal daily life.

“He is genuinely in love with his job as a teacher. He makes an effort to get to know his students and makes learning fun for them.”

Koster said Haas encouraged her to praise her daughter for her hard work in class and expressed a true passion for his work.

“I do believe that teachers have the hardest job in the world,” she said. “I believe that Mr. Haas has left a mark on my child’s life forever. As she leaves elementary school to move to junior high, I believe he has taught her things she will remember for a lifetime. For that, I will never be able to thank him enough.”

Haas started out at FHSU as a radiology major, but going into to his junior year, he switched his major to teaching.

His mother was a teacher. She died of cancer between Haas’ fifth- and sixth-grade year in school.

“I always remembered how caring she was, and she always seemed to be happy to help other people,” he said. “I wanted to do something that genuinely made me happy. It was weird, because I didn’t see myself as a teacher, but it just kind of found me and so did coaching. I didn’t think I would do either one, but it is weird how you get shoved in the direction you should probably go in.”

The small Hoxie community rallied around Haas’ family after his mother died. He said, to a great extent, he was raised by his teachers and the community.

“That’s probably another reason I became a teacher is those people that affected me so much,” he said. “When your world is kind of upside down, you are going somewhere safe every day. People show that they care about you as a person. Teachers were pretty special for me. I cant imagine as a radiologist I would be able to pay those people back. I want to thank them somehow.”

One of his high school teachers, history teacher Olive Krannawitter, particularly stood out in his mind.

“He taught us a lot of life lessons. He taught us what happens if you need to change a tire.  Things like that are still valuable to be today. Budgeting … and this was a history class, but he cared about where we would be in our 30s and down the road. The biggest thing was that we knew Mr. Krannawitter cared about us.  I would say he was the greatest teacher I ever had.”

Haas said he tries to find those teachable moments in his own class.

He said challenging a student, who may be struggling, to work through a problem is maybe more important than the answer they come up with in the end.

“Letting them know it is OK to struggle and teaching them to persevere through that [is important], because down the road in 15 years, that is the most important lesson we teach them,” he said. “They might not remember how to get the area of a kite, but if they could persevere through that problem and find a solution, even if it is not there in the first three to five minutes of work, that is probably the more lasting lesson and is more important down the road.”

Because Haas works with college students as a coach, he sees the struggles young adults go through.

“Especially in their freshman year in college, a lot of them are essentially lost because they have never had to do things on their own. I see where they end up down the road,” he said. “Everybody is afraid of failure, but it is not a final outcome, and we all have to understand it is a part of the process of growing.”

Haas said he is always growing as a teacher and a person, but he said he can’t imagine doing anything else.

“Everyday I go home, and I am pretty happy at the end of the day,” he said. “You get one life, and you should really enjoy what you choose to do. That’s how you get fulfillment. I am just happy to do what I do.”

By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post

Wednesday in Hays, Edgar Rene´ of Puerto Rico used song and dance to bring Spanish to life for students.

He performed for a group of area Spanish students at the 12th Street Auditorium. The students have spent the last several months listening to Spanish songs from Rene´’s performance.

Caitlin Leiker, Hays High School student, sang with the Rene´ and students from HHS performed a dance routine with the singer.

Rene´’s tour “Viviras 2018-2019” seeks to help students better their Spanish language skills, but learn about Hispanic culture. He also brings a message of positive self image to the students.

Rene´ told the students performing on this U.S. tour was the culmination of a dream for him.

“I am blessed and grateful that you gave me the opportunity to be here to share my music with you guys and my message,” he said.

He said he first knew he wanted to be a singer when he was a boy and was asked to sing the “The Star -Spangled Banner.” He is a native-Spanish speaker and was trying to sing the words in English. He forgot some of the words, but he said that performance made him fall in love with singing and music.

“I practiced and practiced, and I touched a lot of doors, and I saw a lot of doors close in my face,” he said.

He related an instance during this tour that helped him know he was following the right dream.

A student came up to him after a performance in Pennsylvania. Rene´ asked him if he wanted to have his picture taken with him. The boy said he had no cellphone to take the picture, so Rene’ used his own cellphone to snap the photo. The boy began to cry. He said no one had ever taken a picture with him. His mother was gone, and he did not have a good relationship with his dad.

The boy said he was near giving up — quitting on life. He said Rene´ had given him hope to go on and hope enough to try to build a relationship with his dad.

Rene´ said he had to excuse himself from the autograph session because he was crying.

He told the students that he hoped they would always choose viviras (living).

“That is why we are here” he said, “not only to sing and dance and have fun. We are here to say it is not over here. There is a purpose in your life. You guys are awesome. Every time you look at the mirror, you look at a beautiful person. You look at yourself, love you first, then you can [give] love to the people.”

He continued, “When we learn another language, we are more human. When we can understand others, we can understand their cultures and we allow others to understand us too.”

TMP, Larned High School, Trego High School and Quinter High School students also attended the performance.