Tomi Rues

I attribute my success to having a strong work ethic and being fortunate enough to do something I love. When you love what you're doing, it's easier to be successful because the reward can be intrinsic rather than extrinsic. Being an educator doesn't always pay a lot; however, I have loved everything I've ever done. I also have been fortunate to have support from my family, colleagues, and friends. I should mention I am thankful to have inherited my love of kids and positive outlook on life from my mom and grandma.

For teaching, the best advice I received was from a professor in graduate school who told me that if you're teaching a class, start off strong and then get lighter - don't start off light, because students will resent you. That really stuck with me. I always start off tough and strong with really high expectations. I expect students to show up, and I expect it to be a really good class. I hardly ever had anyone miss class. I wanted students to come because we were actually learning something together. For writing, the best advice is just to write - you just really need to sit your butt in the chair and write. And you're going to revise a ton. Just thinking you're going to sit down and write something perfect is very naive. You sit down and write it, and then you have to revise, revise, revise.

For both teaching and writing, I would say the best advice is to keep pushing yourself and to keep growing. Don't change things just for change's sake - I worked for a community college that was really annoying because they just kept trying to always change, change, change, and to me, that's not really growth. We need to implement change when it will really help with growth. So keep pushing yourself, and remember it's really fun to grow. Just keep being the best version of yourself.

For education, I don't think anyone really understands how tough it can be until you're actually in the classroom. Meeting students where they're at and trying to bring their best out in challenging situations is difficult. As an elementary school librarian, getting kids to read was definitely a challenge - encouraging and inspiring kids to read is tough whether you're in the library or in your classroom. For writing, I think this is the toughest thing I've ever done. You can be an excellent writer and produce really great stories, and there's no guarantee anything is going to be published. It's very challenging because you just have to keep growing and pushing yourself and hoping to be at the right place at the right time to make a connection and get your story out there. It's hard to get published. Tons of people are self-publishing, but if you want your work to be professional - edited, marketed, etc. - that's hard.

The values most important to me are integrity and kindness. I think it's important to be honest and to be kind, and to put the work in - to do the hard work.