Have you ever been bullied? Either during your school years or in your adult life? My guess is that at some point your answer would be "yes." I am incredibly fortunate to be working with a group students this year on what I call "lost skills." In this work, one of my students came in one day looking sad. I asked her what was wrong and she said she had been bullied earlier in the day. This got me thinking about all of the instances I dealt with last year as a vice princi

About a week ago, I posted this picture on social media shortly after I got back from a camping trip: I posted this to my social media accounts around 5pm. By all accounts, in this picture the hubs and I are ecstatically happy and in love, enjoying an evening out at Swabbie's on the river. Life looks picture perfect, right? In that moment we were having a good time, then we got into a conversation that caused a HUGE argument: finances. So about 12 minutes after I took thi

A woman approached me yesterday and wanted to purchase one of the bracelets that said "not alone" on one side, and the suicide hotline (1.800.273.8255) on the other side. In conversation, she told me that she worked with veterans at the VA in Mather, and said many of the veterans that have come back from their service have been suicidal. I again felt inspired to stamp more bracelets with the suicide hotline on them, and then discovered that there is a song out there by Logic

There has always been a stigma surrounding mental health and mental illness. Perhaps it's because we can't physically SEE signs & symptoms of mental illness. If someone is suffering from depression, they may have figured out a way to hide it so it doesn't manifest itself in outward physical symptoms. There are certainly people who look and act like they are depressed (low energy, crying, sleeping a lot, easily agitated), but oftentimes these physical signs are dismissed as

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

growing up i never felt like i "fit in." i was painfully shy, and the idea of talking about surface-level, useless stuff the way other kids and teenagers would just didn't interest me. but i did my best. right around middle school i was fortunate enough to find several individuals who shared my distaste for small talk, and we are still good friends to this day. we get together (not as much as any of us would like) and talk about what is going on in each of our lives, we l

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

i've never wanted to shoot up a school (or any public place large or small for that matter). i don't own a gun, i've never shot a gun, and i don't know how to shoot a gun. but i DO know how the many school shooters have felt in the moments leading up to the school shootings. the FBI did a study on school shooters and found several personality traits, characteristics, motives that were prevalent in the school shooters minds prior to the horrific acts they carried out. a few