Mrs. Rue is passionate about understanding the trials of her students and helping them with English class struggles she also experienced during high school.
Teacher Feature: Mrs. Rue
We peek into the life of well known and well loved MHS English and AP Seminar teacher Mrs. Nichole Rue
Mrs. Nichole Rue is an English teacher currently teaching General English 10, AP Seminar, and E-Credit here at Mead High School. She’s been teaching for a total of nine years, all of which have been at MHS, as well as additional previous student teaching time at Frederick High School. We’ve been lucky enough to have her witnessing the incoming of freshmen and the graduation of seniors since the first MHS graduating class of 2011.
Mrs. Rue has taught many different English classes throughout this time, including General English 9, 10, 11, and 12 as well as Honors English 9 and 10, AP Language & Composition, and College Prep English 12, a course Mead offered in the past but no longer does. She has also been specifically trained in AP Research but has not instructed the class.
Though Mrs. Rue greatly enjoys the classes she does teach, she’s very interested in creative writing and would love to teach a creative writing class someday in the future.
Mrs. Rue decided she wanted to be an English teacher in high school. She had a very unique experience with her high school English classes. There was a wide variety of classes to choose from during her sophomore, junior, and senior years, spanning from courses that studied Shakespearan literature to courses that compared books with their correlating movies. Mrs. Rue took Contemporary Modern Literature.
Mrs. Rue said that the ability to experience many different avenues of English learning led her to the path of wanting to become an English teacher. But when she talked to her own English teacher, she suggested that Mrs. Rue should avoid that career due to her personal English struggles.
This swayed her to instead major in marketing at Drake University. She studied topics like advertising and journalism before transferring to Colorado University (CU). In order to avoid retaking many of the marketing classes she’d attended at Drake, Mrs. Rue switched her major to creative writing, knowing that many people in the marketing field had the same major. She received her bachelor’s degree in creative writing.
After graduating from college and working for about seven years in marketing, Mrs. Rue came to the conclusion that she would be much happier as a teacher. Following her passion, she went back to get her teaching license.
She said she “always thought that [she] would end up teaching”.
One of Mrs. Rue’s biggest drives for teaching English is her goal to help students in a subject that wasn’t easy for her in school. “I’ve always wanted to teach English because it’s what I struggled with,” she shared. “If you’ve personally gone through a struggle with a content area, it helps you understand what the struggles of your students are.”
Along with English, Mrs. Rue teaches AP Seminar, a class that helps high school students learn how to conduct college level research and apply it to larger papers and projects.
Previous AP Seminar student Jessica Cooper (‘21) said that the class “is a good opportunity to explore topics you’re interested in and educate yourself about modern issues of [your] choice”. She also enjoys the way the class is taught, saying, “Mrs. Rue does an amazing job encouraging exploration into genuine interests.”
The study of literature in particular is something that Mrs. Rue is very passionate about. She believes that “you can talk about life… through literature” and that it opens conversations about everything from communication to self image to how you treat other people.
She strongly believes that teaching English is “more about [student] relationships and making the learning interesting and fun than it is about everybody knowing where… commas go”.
Her students clearly agree she does an excellent job fostering relationships with them. Cooper said that Mrs. Rue is “easy to talk to and interacts with students in a very genuine way”.
When she isn’t teaching, Mrs. Rue usually spends time with her husband and daughter playing board games, going on nature walks, and watching movies, or she takes some time for herself to do yoga, whether that be in weekly classes or on her own. In addition to her daughter and husband, other members of Mrs. Rue’s family include her dog (Penny), cat (Patches), and two chickens (Rey and Leia).
She also has an older brother and often uses his and her own funny high school stories and experiences to make her students laugh (and, of course, teach lessons) in her English classes.
Mrs. Rue has a passion for connecting with her students through literature and conversational teaching techniques. We’re very thankful to have her as a teacher here at Mead.