1966 Award Winners

Biographies below were included in the program for the year listed here and were current as of that time.

Eva Chalfant

Citizenship and Geography Teacher

El Dorado Junior High School

USD 490 El Dorado

As a teacher of citizenship and geography at El Dorado Junior High School, Miss Eva M. Chalfant has gained the admiration and respect of hundreds of boys and girls who have passed through her classes during the past twenty-one years. She started her teaching at El Dorado in 1929 as an elementary school teacher. She was asked to transfer to the junior high school in 1945, first to teach world history, then to take over her present assignment.

Miss Chalfant grew up on a farm near Knob Noster, Missouri. She graduated from high school at Leeton, attended Central Missouri for a year so that she could qualify for a teaching certificate, and taught rural schools in her home area for five years. When her family moved to El Dorado, she went along; she took summer work at Kansas State Teachers College to qualify for Kansas certification. She completed requirements for a college degree in 1944 at what is now Wichita State University.

An active member of the El Dorado City Teachers Association, the Kansas State Teachers Association, and the National Education Association, Miss Chalfant has also found time to participate in community organizations. She has served as president and treasurer of the Butler County Council for UNESCO, and she has served her church in many ways. She is a charter member of the American Association of University Women.

Max Bickford, Executive Officer of the Kansas Board of Regents and formerly superintendent of schools in El Dorado, wrote recently:

"Miss Chalfant is an outstanding classroom teacher and has devoted her life to being just that. There is no pretense about this woman; she has only one desire and that is to be a good teacher and companion to her students. She is a teacher's teacher and is also an administrator's teacher. She fills the bill with everyone, but most of all with her students."

Louis A. Coppoc

Mathematics Teacher

Belpre High School

USD 347 Kinsely-Offerle

For the past thirty-three years, Louis A. Coppoc has been a member of the high school faculty at Belpre, in Edwards County. He is the mathematics teacher, but he coached the athletic teams for a number of years and has taken on other assignments at the school as the need arose.

Before moving to Belpre in 1934, Mr Coppoc taught mathematics and science at Waldo High School and at Bloom High School. He is a graduate of Ottawa University and has done additional work at the University of Colorado, Kansas State University, and the University of Wisconsin. Some of his recent work has been done as a member of a National Science Foundation Institute.

The son of a Baptist minister, Mr. Coppoc is an active worker in the church. For years he served as superintendent of the Sunday school, and he still teaches an adult class.

Mr. Coppoc has held every office in the Edwards County Teachers Association. He served two terms on the Board of Directors of the Kansas State Teachers Association and has been a member of the Classroom Teacher Commission.

When Mr. and Mrs. Coppoc and their children get together, school teaching is likely to be the subject of conversation. Mrs. Coppoc is a full-time teacher. Two of their three sons are teachers and coaches (the third son is working toward a doctorate at Harvard Medical School), and their daughter, a graduate of Kansas State University, formerly taught physical education.

Words such as "inspiring" and "stimulating" were often used to describe Mr. Coppoc's teaching by the former students who wrote to the Selection Committee in support of his nomination. Several mentioned the fact that he was largely responsible for their continuing their formal education beyond high school. One form er student commented as follows:

"Beyond teaching itself is the interest Louis shows and maintains in his students. Before we knew guidance as it exists today, he was raising questions relative to self-fulfillment and life patterns or style. His counsel greatly influenced my decision to attend college, with resultant significant effect on my total life pattern. His sincere interest and encouragement have been of immeasuable assistance to me and to the many other students of his whom I know."

Helen Glaser

Mathematics Teacher

Field Kindley High School

USD 445 Coffeyville

For the past forty-three years, Miss Helen Glaser has been a teacher of mathematics in the Field Kindley High School at Coffeyville. This by itself would seem to be an outstanding record of service, but it only begins to tell the story of her contributions to the school in which she teaches and the community in which she lives.

Miss Glaser was born in Missouri, but she graduated from Pittsburg High School at the tender age of fifteen. She received a life certificate from Kansas State College in 1917 and began her teaching career in the rural high school at Mulberry that fall. She was younger when she started teaching than are most high school seniors now.

After receiving a degree at Pittsburg, Miss Glaser joined the faculty of Field Kindley High School in 1923. In addition to her teaching assignment, she has sponsored many student groups. Best known is the "Tornado Tillie Pep and Service Club," which she organized in 1929 and still sponsors.

Miss Glaser does not confine her work to school activities. She has twice served as president of the Coffeyville Teachers Association, and she is secretary of the Kansas Mathematics Teachers Association.

In 1955, Miss Glaser was honored as Outstanding Teacher of the Year by the Coffeyville Chamber of Commerce. She has been chairman of the Coffeyville Junior Red Cross and sponsor of Girl Reserves. She is a member of the First Baptist Church of Coffeyville.

Evelyn Harper

Reading and English Teacher

Atchison High School

USD 409 Atchison

Selection as a !\laster Teacher of 1966 is the second signal honor which has come to Mrs. Evelyn Harper this year. Recently she was named 1966 1:ansas Teacher of the Year by State Superintendent Adel Throckmorton, and as such will be a candidate for 1966 National Teacher of the Year.

Mrs. Harper teaches reading and English at Atchison High School. She has been in the Atchison schools since 194 7, first as an elementary principal, later as a junior high school teacher. She started on her present assignment in 1961.

Although she was born in Kansas City, Mrs. Harper grew up in the Bronx, New York City, and received some of her high school education there. She graduated from the high school in Chickasha, Oklahoma, but returned to New York City to earn the degree, Bachelor of Science in Education, from New York University. In 1937, she received a master's degree from Columbia.

Mrs. Harper has been active in professional organizations. She has served as president of the Atchison City Teachers Association, and in 1964 was vice president of the Topeka section of the Kansas State Teachers Association.

In addition to her work with professional groups in education, Mrs. Harper has been active in such organizations as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Girl Scouts. She is a member of the executive board of the Kansas Civil Rights Commission and was recently named to the board of trustees of the Kansas State Multiple Sclerosis chapter.

Mrs. Harper holds a Specialist in Education degree from the University of Kansas, with emphasis in reading. She has been invited to join the staff of Princeton University for the 1966 summer session.

Maurice Little

Vocational Agriculture Teacher and Farm Mechanics

Goodland High School

USD 352 Goodland

Maurice Little has taught vocational agriculture in the Goodland schools since 1943, but prior to that date, his assignments in education were many and varied. He taught science, mathematics, history, and journalism; he coached athletic teams; he directed school bands; he served as principal and superintendent. Perhaps because of this background, he is best known as a teacher of boys rather than as a teacher of a subject.

At present, Mr. Little is responsible for the vocational agriculture and farm mechanics programs in Goodland High School and the Northwest Kansas Area Vocational-Technical School at Goodland. His teaching experience before coming to Goodland was in Colorado, at Akron, Erie, Lyons, and Longmont.

A graduate of Colorado A & M in 1925, Mr. Little returned to that institution, after it had become Colorado State University, to earn the master's degree in 1952. He has done additional course work at the University of Colorado, Fort Hays State College, and Kansas State.

Mr. Little has taken an active part in professional educational association work. He is currently president of the Goodland Teachers Association, and

he has served as president of the Sherman County Teachers Association. He was vice-president of the Hays section of the Kansas State Teachers Association.

His community activities in Goodland include membership in Rotary and the Lions Club. He has served as sponsor and judge for 4-H Club activities in

Sherman County for many yeai's. He organized the first Young Farmers class to be developed in Kansas after World War II.

Ione Ramey

Principal

Washington Elementary School

USD 233 Olathe

"You'd never know she was a principal!" This was one of the comments made by the colleagues of Mrs. Ione E. Ramey, principal of the Washington Elementary School in Olathe, when they submitted her nomination as a 1966 Master Teacher. Although principals in general might be inclined to question this statement, it was made as a compliment-first and last, Mrs. Ramey is and has been a teacher of boys and girls rather than an administrator.

Her teaching career began in her home community, Parker, two years after she graduated from high school. She had had no college work at that time, so she began to acquire credit at Ursuline College of Paola. Eventually, through summer school, extension classes, and part-time attendance, she received the bachelor's degree from Kansas State College, Pittsburg. Not content with this achievement, she started working toward a master's, which was awarded, also by Pittsburg, in 1958.

Her teaching positions have been at Parker, Merriam , Spring Hill, and Olathe. She moved to the Olathe system in 1950, first as a classroom teacher.

Mrs. Ramey has always displayed creative talent. She writes music and poetry; her operattas and plays have been produced at many school functions, in Olathe and elsewhere.

She is active in professional organizations, including the Olathe Teachers Association, the KSTA, the NEA, the Kansas Association of Elementary School Principals, and the National Congress of Parents and Teachers. She has worked in Kappa Delta Pi, honorary education fraternity; the American Association of University Women, and the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Wesley E. Simpson

Biology Teacher

Salina High School

USD 305 Salina

Wesley E. Simpson, biology teacher at Salina High School, began his work in that school in 1928. He had previously served as teacher, principal, and superintendent at Republic, following his graduation from Kansas State University in 1923.

During his years at Salina, Mr. Simpson has held administrative positions-principal, assistant principal, and dean of boys-but he has always returned to his first love, the teaching of biological science. He has done much more, however, than simply teach standard courses . He established and still teaches a course in laboratory technique for future nurses, technicians, and doctors. More than ten years ago, he developed a seminar for college-bound seniors. Within the last few years, he started a program of independent study in biology for the academically talented.

Mr. Simpson holds the master's degree from Stanford University and has clone additional graduate study at the University of Colorado and Washington University. Professionally, he has been active in the local, state, and national associations. He served as vice-president of the Salina section of the KST A conventions, and twice was president of the Salina City Teachers.

His interests have not been limited to educational organizations and activities. He has worked with the Masonic Lodge and Eastern Star; he helped with the leadership training program of the Coronado Council of the Boy Scouts. For twenty years, he has been on the Board of Asbury Hospital.

Perhaps his most notable achievement within the community, however, is represented by the Special Education Center for handicapped children which was opened in Salina in 1961. This center was the culmination of a project carried on, largely under Mr. Simpson's direction, by the Lions Club.