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'She made you want to be better': An open letter to my high school teacher

Mrs. Klaus passed away this week, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. She was more than just a teacher. She was also a wife, a mother, and a grandmother.
Photo: Route 3 Films, KSDK

One of the great honors of my job is that I get to write about people in our community who make a difference.

Today, I am writing about a woman who made a difference in MY life. And the lives of countless others.

For 27 years, Ruth Klaus was a teacher at Marquette Catholic High School in Alton, Illinois. She taught Humanities and English. She also coached the dance team and led the theater department.

She could be an intimidating woman, who had full commanded of her classroom at all times. She was tough, and demanded excellence from her students. She didn’t tolerate nonsense in the classroom our outside it.

But she was kind. And she cared deeply. And she made you want to be better. She was your greatest cheerleader.

I know this because Mrs. Klaus was my teacher, and a big reason why I entered the journalism profession. She fostered a love for writing I didn’t know I had, and supported me and my dreams long after I graduated. So many of her other former students would share similar stories.

“She had high expectations,” said Marquette Principal, Mike Slaughter. “She had high expectations for herself and she had high expectations for her students. In an essence, that’s what a great teacher is about. And she was a great teacher.”

Mrs. Klaus passed away this week, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. She was more than just a teacher. She was also a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. Her family wants any memorial contributions in her honor to benefit the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network.

I asked several of her former students and colleagues to share stories about the impact Mrs. Klaus made on their life. Here are a few of their memories:

“You wanted to impress Mrs. Klaus. You feared getting back that paper with her red pen marks on it,” said Caiti Carrow, a former student at Marquette.

“I will never forget -- one time she handed me back a paper and said ‘change the date on this, you can use it in college.’ And you felt on top of the world. You knew she had taught you something, that you were leaving with something you could take with you the rest of your life.”

Carrow now works in public relations in St. Louis, and says Klaus helped inspire her career.

“I fell in love with writing because of her,” Carrow said. “She showed you that there’s so much more to life and to go out there and grab it. And I think a lot of her students, myself included, feel that we’ve done that, and it was her gentle push that got us started.”

“I remember a year ago having coffee with her when I was home for Christmas. And we sat at Starbucks for three hours and just talked,” said Nick Julian, another former student who grew close to Klaus during theater productions.

“She saw the differences in me, she saw the differences in everybody -- and she pulled those out of you and encouraged you to be difference, and wanted you to be happy.”

“That woman had the ability to walk into the classroom and she just commanded it, without saying anything,” added Mary Rivera. “She could walk into my classroom without saying anything.”

Rivera is also a former student, who now teaches at Marquette. When she returned as an educator, Rivera said Klaus became a mentor and close friend.

“She showed up every single day, and she gave it her absolute all and she gave her students what they deserve -- and that was a great education.”

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