My organization has been given an incredible opportunity to do some youth empowerment coaching at a middle school this school year. In doing this important work, I have been spending the last couple months building relationships with select students who are struggling with behavior, grades, attendance, and success in general. Case in point, an eleven year old boy named Nathan. Nathan has been blowing out of many of his classes, cussing teachers out, kicking classroom doors,

Here we are again. ANOTHER school shooting. Another group of innocent people dead, and another gunman who could have gotten help so he didn't feel the need to act in such rage. According to the Washington Post, one of the potential motives of the shooter, Dimitrios Pagourtzis, was romantic rejection by a peer, Shana Fisher. This was called out - this behavior was called out by the FBI in The School Shooter: A Threat Assessment Perspective. Specifically the FBI says, "clu

The first time I was introduced to cutting and self-harm was during my first year of teaching. There was a student who was deeply troubled, and one day when he came to ask me a question about the math concepts we were working on, his loose sleeve slipped up and I saw his forearms littered with one inch long cuts. Being that this was the first time I ever saw this type of self-inflicted injury, I kind of freaked out and went straight to one of the counselors on campus to let

Some people are born with the ability to "feel" people. I don't mean "feel" in the sense of feeling them in a physical way, but the ability to feel their presence, feel their energy, their moods, their thoughts. It's an incredible gift to be born with, but a daunting one at that. I have been educating kids age 12 to 18 since 2006. My passion in working with these amazing young people is getting to KNOW them, and I mean REALLY know them. There are many teachers who show u