Ruth Klenke is a vocational supervisor at Pioneer Joint Vocational School in Shelby. Her love for sharing knowledge, working with others, and helping others build self-esteem made a career in education a natural choice for Mrs. Klenke. "I have been able to take students of differing abilities, varied social backgrounds, and minimal self-esteem and motivate them to take part in leadership activities," she says. Mrs. Klenke has prepared and presented several teams of students at competitions sponsored by the Vocational Industrial Clubs of America. In reviewing the successes those teams found in the competition, Mrs. Klenke chooses to dwell not on the honors, but on the lessons in teamwork and mutual respect the students learned from the competition experience. Mrs. Klenke also values those occasions when a student of hers chooses to pursue the teaching life. She prizes the experience of seeing "a welder, or a cosmetologist, or a person from the electronics field begin a new career as a teacher," and she does everything in her power to make that career decision a reality.
1981 University of Toledo, B.A.
