Caroline Rowe

I think that my parents have always modeled, like, working hard and never giving up, and doing whatever it takes to achieve your goals. You know, not gonna be lazy, we're not gonna not do what we're supposed to do, we're gonna wake up early in the morning to go to swim practice at 5:30, because we want to be the best swimmer that we can. I was an athlete as a child, and I think that's something that they always modeled for me, and something that I do now, especially as a mother. I wake up before my kids do and work a little bit, and when I was a teacher, I would wake up and work on my part-time jobs before anybody in the house woke up and then continued working after they went to bed. I know it's hard to have a work-life balance, but that is just something that I had to do to make sure that I paid the bills as a single mother. I think just that kind of tenacity and determination is something that I learned at a young age, because of my parents.

I think to be flexible and maybe to try something new, and have the confidence to take risks. The teaching was very new to me, and I entered that profession later in life, in my early 40s, and I think kind of knowing your passions, and I knew that it would be something that I was excited about and passionate about, but also would be new and maybe a little bit scary for me. So just kind of having that foundation of what is exciting and interesting to you, and the confidence in knowing what you're good at, and then using that to potentially venture into new fields with some level of confidence and to take risks and be flexible.

I think always keep the youth at the forefront of thinking. I think that, especially if you're sitting behind a computer writing curriculum, or in your office all day, and it just seems more like an office job or a desk job, it's very hard to not forget, but to lose sight of the purpose of what you're doing. So I think always keeping the children in mind, in their needs, and staying up to date on research or news articles or different things that are kind of popping up about what's going on with youth, and to make sure that we are just always keeping their needs at the forefront.

I think probably getting into the right headspace to write, because that is so much of what my job depends on, and constantly being tired, and really motivating myself to do that, to get to the right headspace. That's the biggest challenge with writing. Sometimes I just take a break and run for a little bit and get my head back and think about work while I'm running, and that's sometimes where my best ideas surface. As for opportunities, a new opportunity that has popped up is there's a lot around character development right now. I think that the field is kind of shifting away from talking about social-emotional learning, just because of the political landscape, so character development is kind of a new area that I'm starting to think about and explore a little bit with regards to youth and kind of what that looks like.

I think relationships are really important. Outside of work, certainly having a solid community and people that you can trust and rely on, I think that's really important, whether it's family or friends, but I think it's also important at work as well, building those solid relationships and having the confidence to ask for help when you need it, whether it's at work or outside of work. Relationships, that's the big piece for me.