Yvette Eshiba

I definitely attribute my success to my relationship with God. I cannot get around it. I can't even do the job without his help. Whenever I felt like giving up, or I felt like I just wasn't qualified, or I felt like I was an imposter, I always got a second wind through prayer, through meditation, through consecration. I mean, I had to work on my spiritual life to do this job. Also, I started off working with teenagers in the church, and that's where I broke through, because that's where I taught Sunday school. Then I went from doing it in the community to doing it as a profession, having the skills to do it because I broke through doing that.

I'm recently writing a book called The Structured Instructor for hiring teachers and current teachers who are just melting away from all the demands this industry makes on an individual. My advice is to have a love for your clients, who are the students, because I believe that if you genuinely care about their growth, it's going to show in everything that you do. So when the going gets tough, remember that you really care about your clients, genuinely. It's helpful to motivate you to stay in there. But there's one thing I've noticed: you have to have a calling or a gift for this industry. Determine what motivated you to do this in the first place so that you can know if you're really designed for this. Otherwise, it can overwhelm you. I mean, it can really take a toll on you, your energy. So you need to know that this is definitely what you're called to do.