The beloved Ms. Ruehl hasn’t always been a teacher, in fact prior to being a teacher, Ruehl was on the road toward med school working in an emergency department, however when Ruehl realized she was pregnant, she decided her best option for her family-to-be was no longer medical school. Despite this, Ruehl continued a chemistry major and began her journey in education. Ruehl found herself wondering “what’s the next best thing I can do to help people?” Her response was teaching.
During our interview, Ruehl stated, “My thought was then maybe I could help people do good in chemistry so then they could, if they wanted to, be doctors.” It’s people like Ruehl who give us our great doctors. When you think about it, we have so much to thank the teachers for, especially for being the ones to teach our future doctors.
Looking back, Ruehl has been a teacher for quite some time, with the 2024-2025 school year being her 12th year of teaching. During the majority of those years, Ruehl has been both a student and a teacher. Ruehl was constantly advancing her own education while also providing education for hundreds of students. Ruehl began post secondary education during her senior year of high school at Oak Hills. When asked about it, Ruehl stated, “I actually went to college my senior year of high school full out, on college campus my senior year. I didn’t report to any high school classes at all.” Ruehl has been a student at several colleges including Cincinnati Christian University, Mount St. Joseph University, University of North Carolina Wilmington, University of Cincinnati, and finally Miami University where she is still a student working towards a Doctorate in Educational Leadership. The amount of time and effort she has put into her education shows true passion and dedication.
Despite her extensive learning experience, Ruehl has really focused in on something special. Educational Leadership. The words sound familiar but together and as a degree, I found myself wondering “What is Educational Leadership?” I took my question to Ruehl and her response was breathtaking. Ruehl stated, “It is hard work but it’s rewarding work. I think the thing about education that a lot of people forget is yes we’re teaching students content and preparing them for the real world, but we also have to realize that public education needs to be an equitable system and were seeing more and more of that that isn’t equitable so what I’ve been learning through this doctorate is really a lot of information on why it’s not equitable and how as an educational leader how we can use our voice to move public education back to being more equitable.” As a student, I never thought of our education system that way but after this interview my heart was moved. I admired Ms. Ruehls perspective and dedication to the education system, not all teachers see the issues she does and not many care to fight them either.
Now that I was enlightened on what Educational Leadership meant as far as its material, I had another, bigger question. I asked Ruehl, “What does Educational leadership mean to you in particular?” and again, her answer was moving. Ruehl smiled and responded with, “I’m going to get really emotional, just because my passion is education and my passion is making sure that the students and youth feel like people care about them and I feel like so many times in public education we miss that piece… We need teachers that want to be here and want to be here for the kids and so I really hope that eventually I can use my doctorate to possibly help you know grow teachers that actually want to be in the profession to help and help it be a more equitable system. That’s kind of what the degree means to me.” I was moved by what Ruehl said, especially as one of her former students.
Something I wondered about Ruehl was how her students view her as a teacher, what has Ruehl done to impact them. I brought my question to some of her X-bell students. When interviewing Gabrielle Webster, an Oak Hills junior, she said, “I feel like she listens to students and gives good advice.” We all know Ms. Ruehl does her best to take care of her students and make them feel welcome and another junior from Ms. Ruehl’s X-bell, Dillon Turnbough agreed by stating, “she’s really nice and understanding, she takes her time to help students understand things.” Overall Ruehl does a great job at being there for her students and her Doctorate in Educational Leadership will help to further that compassion. She really does have a heart for education.
