Hayes’ Castle makes the grade

Cassy Cas­tle

Story and photo by

LIZ ROBERTSON

Hayes High School senior Cassy Cas­tle has always wanted to teach, at least since kindergarten.

She laughed recall­ing that just the other day she and her mother found an old kinder­garten paper she wrote that said she wanted to be a teacher when she grew up.

She has since nar­rowed it down to math teacher.

Cassy said there have been many that have advised her not to fol­low this road as the teach­ing field has lost jobs in recent years. 

“I did con­sider for a while becom­ing an accoun­tant,” she mused. But she said she knows her par­ents will sup­port her in any final deci­sion she makes. “I was for­tu­nate to real­ize early enough that it is not all about the money.”

She vol­un­teers as a math tutor now and said she loves see­ing the stu­dents grow. 

Cassy is tak­ing advanced place­ment cal­cu­lus this year. She has always liked and “been pretty decent at math grow­ing up,” she said, admit­ting to being a closet nerd.

“Cassy is the type of stu­dent that every teacher dreams of hav­ing in class. She is extremely bright, very hard­work­ing and ded­i­cated to being a suc­cess at every­thing she does. You know you have a great stu­dent when they have a 98 per­cent in your class and yet still come to you to ask ques­tions to ensure that they under­stand the other 2 per­cent,” said Hayes math teacher Shawn Gray. “Beyond her own suc­cess, Cassy also trea­sures the oppor­tu­ni­ties to help those around her become bet­ter peo­ple and stu­dents. She doesn’t hes­i­tate to help explain prob­lems to a class­mate who doesn’t under­stand. She is very active within our com­mu­nity through var­i­ous orga­ni­za­tions both within and out­side of our school, each of which per­forms ser­vice activ­i­ties. She sin­cerely wants to make the world around her a bet­ter place.”

Gray added that Cassy is “not just a dream stu­dent, she is the type of per­son that I pray my daugh­ter grows up to be like.”

So far Cassy has been accepted into Bowl­ing Green State and Kent State uni­ver­si­ties next year and is also con­sid­er­ing Youngstown. She is lean­ing toward Bowl­ing Green based on other teach­ers’ com­ments about the school.

“I would really, really like to go there,” she said. She is apply­ing for the lead­er­ship acad­emy at Bowl­ing Green, which she would attend for a month in the sum­mer, and has plans to, no mat­ter where she goes, go into the hon­ors program.

Cassy entered the Delaware City school sys­tem, mov­ing from Galion, begin­ning at Dempsey Mid­dle School in the 8th grade.

“It was tough. The only time I’ve ever moved,” she said. While she made the tran­si­tion to the new team at Dempsey, high school was a bit more daunting.

“But I got involved in stuff right away, and that helped,” she said.

She ran for stu­dent coun­cil, and was sec­re­tary her fresh­man year.

“I met new peo­ple and learned what all goes on at high school,” she said. Laugh­ing, she added, the high school expe­ri­ence has been fine up until this point, indi­cat­ing she is shar­ing in the nor­mal senior stress along with the rest of her class.

While this is the first year she is not on stu­dent coun­cil, Cassy has kept a full plate. She is pres­i­dent of National Honor Soci­ety, which takes a lot of time, she admits, espe­cially when the group is doing more com­mu­nity ser­vice this year. She is also in choir, is an in-school tutor, library aid, recently joined Future Chris­t­ian Ath­letes, as well as earned the county opti­mist award this year and is in the music honor society.

Cassy also does a lot in the com­mu­nity with her church, in addi­tion to singing on the praise team.

Jeff Jones, assis­tant prin­ci­pal at Hayes, had Cassy as a stu­dent before he became an administrator.

“She is an out­go­ing, kind indi­vid­ual who has a good head on her shoul­ders. She is able to look beyond her­self as a per­son, which is a skill that is not eas­ily acquired. She is aca­d­e­m­i­cally strong and has a very bright future, no mat­ter what pro­fes­sion she chooses to go into — but my under­stand­ing is that she would like to teach, which would be an out­stand­ing call­ing for her given her aca­d­e­mic abil­ity and out­go­ing per­son­al­ity. I look for­ward to see­ing what the future holds for her as I am con­fi­dent she will make some group or orga­ni­za­tion bet­ter,” he said.

Cassy is also the stu­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the school district’s board of education.

“It was a good year to be on with the levy and all. I was a lit­tle scared at first. I did not really know the super­in­ten­dent. Every­thing is so offi­cial, but it’s cool to see behind the scenes. Espe­cially with the levy, it opened my eyes to oppor­tu­ni­ties the school gives us,” she said, adding she respects the board and teach­ers and super­in­ten­dent. “He’s an amaz­ing leader.”

“Cassy is a strong peer leader because of the unfail­ingly pos­i­tive exam­ple she sets,” said dis­trict super­in­ten­dent Paul Craft. “I count on Cassy for her insight­ful, student-based per­spec­tive on our district’s chal­lenges and successes.”

In sports, Cassy par­tic­i­pates in cross coun­try, where she is a cap­tain in her sec­ond year on the team.

“I did it ini­tially to stay in shape, but I’m a com­pet­i­tive per­son so I really got into it,” she said.

But her main sport is soft­ball. Start­ing with T-ball at the age of 5, Cassy has always played the sport and is now captain.

“Cassy has one of the most sin­cere hearts of any­one I have encoun­tered. She has such com­pas­sion for oth­ers and is the epit­ome of liv­ing life to serve other peo­ple. As a stu­dent and as a soft­ball player Cassy always puts her classmates/teammates first and never focuses on her­self. In May, we won the OCC cham­pi­onship in soft­ball and there was not a hap­pier kid in our dugout and she hadn’t even played much. That’s the kind of char­ac­ter and integrity she pos­sesses and it’s really spe­cial, given her age. In class, she does the same thing con­sis­tently seek­ing out ways to help those who strug­gle,” said social stud­ies teacher Jor­dan Black­burn. “She is a per­son who means what she says, who does what she indi­cates she will do, and who always sees the good in other peo­ple and sit­u­a­tions. Her atten­tion to detail and con­sis­tent upbeat atti­tude are refresh­ing, as she is not con­cerned with her grade as much as she is with learn­ing as much as she pos­si­bly can.”

Black­burn continued.

“Cassy Cas­tle is a win­ner and she con­tin­ues to do great things for the rest of her life because she under­stands what it means to sac­ri­fice for the good of the group. When a 17-year-old under­stands the con­cept of sac­ri­fice, he/she is on their way to becom­ing a suc­cess as a col­lege stu­dent, a future employee of an orga­ni­za­tion, a spouse, and a friend. Other than that she’s just OK.”

Babysit­ting full time the past two sum­mers, Cassie learned quickly about money and how to save as she pays for her own gas.

The most impor­tant thing, Cassy said, is that “high school flies by quicker than you real­ize. From the first day what­ever you do now will impact your future.”

She said she knows some that now regret the grades they received a cou­ple years ago.

“It does not feel like I’ve been here three and a half years,” she said. She admits to being excited about the future, “but scared to death. I get home­sick eas­ily. I still have some grow­ing up to do.”

Yet she is very excited about col­lege and being out on her own.

For now, though, she wants to make the most of senior year and the time with her friends. Her goal is to stay as involved as pos­si­ble and not waste any time.

“I’ve grown since fresh­man year. I’ve always been really involved. Peo­ple tell me they look to me for lead­er­ship. I don’t just want to, I feel like I need to,” she said of her lead­er­ship tendencies.

Cassy is the daugh­ter of Angel Mat­son of Delaware and Ron Cas­tle of Galion.

Posted by Liz Robertson on Dec 23 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.