Rebecca Belt, a Media Clerk at Portage High School, believes her role in the community has been able to brighten the world and make it a better place. She grew up on the east side of Gary in the Aetna neighborhood, and graduated from Emerson Visual and Performing Arts School. She then received a Bachelors in RHI Management from Purdue University Calumet.
Belt was a stay at home mom for many years after working in the steel industry. She soon found a deeper passion while volunteering at Myers Elementary in the Media Center.
“Vicky Mills, the Media Clerk at Myers, took me under her wing and showed me everything that was required to clerk,” Belt said.
After just a few years of volunteering and subbing, she was offered the Media Clerk position at Jones Elementary, where she worked for five and a half years. For the last two and a half years she has been serving at Portage High School.
She believes that even the smallest amount of consideration for a community can go a long way.
“Everyday there is an opportunity to serve your community and it doesn't have to be in huge ways. It can be the smallest of things,” Belt said. “I think it’s important to make the place you live a better, brighter place.”
Belt said that she has been fortunate enough to get to see and assist nearly every student at PHS. She believes her role gives her the chance to help students, be a shoulder to cry on, a listening ear, an advocate, or just a friend.
“The majority of high school age students are good, if not great people. It is a joy to work with these young adults,” Belt expressed.
In her free time Rebecca spends her time at Barrington Ridge Baptist Church in Hobart playing piano and taking part in the praise team.
She is grateful for her parents, Barbara and Douglas Bennett, and their encouragement surrounding the importance of faith, honesty, integrity, and tenacity. Alongside these important characteristics, she is also appreciative of their wicked sarcastic sense of humor.
She admires her sister, Julie Law, as well, who acts as a role model of these attributes in real life.
She jokingly thanks her husband, Brian Belt, for putting up with her for the last 26 years.
Rebecca hopes that people within her community believe it’s filled with wonderful and successful students, as she knows first hand.
She leads as a prime example of what it means to continuously believe and stay involved with youth in her community.