Monica Perry

I attribute my success to a strong work ethic, my personal drive to make a meaningful impact, the encouragement of mentors, and the cumulative effect of small acts that leave a lasting difference for my students.

The best career advice I ever received came from my 8th grade teacher, who was one of the first male teachers in my Catholic school. He pulled me aside and told me, 'Monica, you have so much potential. You don't know what you have. And you aren't going to know what you have until you put it out there and get out there and find out what you can do.' We were talking about careers, and he said, 'You have so much potential. You'll be great in any career you do, but you're a natural-born teacher, leader. And I think you'd be really good at that.' I think he was right. I went into teaching, and it was a great career. It was really a good career across the board. I wouldn't change it for anything. I also had another great influence at the University of Toledo, Mary Jo Murray, who told me, 'Your ideas are so good, this is what you gotta do, you gotta think out of your box, you've got to do this, you gotta do that.' She taught me that when you're going into schools with massive amounts of kids in the classroom, you had to always try to find something to keep them occupied and get their learning and keep them going. She was a really good influence on me too.

The first thing I would say is you have to be yourself. You can't be somebody else. You just need to be naturally you, and they're gonna accept you for who you naturally are. I talked to some of the newer teachers that were coming into the field before I left OSS, and they were trying really hard to be somebody else they weren't, and I'm thinking, hmm, that's not gonna work. You've got to be yourself. And I think you have to think out of the box. You can't be conventional all the time. Some things work for some kids, but other times, you need something totally different for somebody else. And you're not gonna probably make everybody happy, I know. There's just as many people I didn't make happy as there is I did make happy, but you've got to try different things, and just go. The only way you're going to know if this field is for you is to go ahead and do it, and try it, and do your best. And that's all that you can do. You gotta be yourself doing it.

One of the biggest challenges in my field is keeping students engaged, especially under changing conditions like remote learning, and addressing the fact that many young people struggle with setting clear goals or developing a strong work ethic. At the same time, there are exciting opportunities as programs I helped build have scaled statewide, and educator-sharing days and expanded outreach continue to grow our impact.

The most important values to me have always been authenticity, hard work, and making a real impact on people's lives. I learned early on from my 8th grade teacher that I had potential I didn't even know about, and he encouraged me to become a teacher and leader, which I followed. Throughout my career, I've always believed in being yourself and thinking outside the box. You can't be conventional all the time - some things work for some kids, but you need something totally different for somebody else. I also learned that you don't have to have everything fancy across the board, just something simple in the way you say it makes a big difference. I grew up in a family of workers - my mom was a bookkeeper, my dad worked at Dana Corporation in the furnaces, and I started working when I was young with a bike route, then at an ice cream cone factory, and worked my way through high school and college. That work ethic was always in my blood. When I was a sophomore in high school, one of the sisters told me she thought the best fit for me was to be on an assembly line at the Jeep plant. After she told me that, I was bound and determined to do something with my life. I worked my way through college and graduated with honors from the University of Toledo. Throughout my career, whether I was teaching middle school, working in Vocational Rehabilitation helping people with disabilities find jobs, or teaching kids about sustainability at OSS, I always focused on helping people reach their potential. When you start seeing people succeed, it gives you a drive to keep helping them. One of my proudest moments was helping a young man who they said would never be able to get a job or drive - he's now been at Walmart for going on 25 years and drives himself to work. I also created programs like Play at the Park where I'd do crafts with neighborhood kids during the summer. Even now, years later, former students come up to me and tell me I changed their life in some way. That's what matters most to me - knowing that even little things you do can make a big impact on someone's life.