The Story Behind the Mission

Teaching isn't just a career—it's an emotional journey.

 

With over two decades as a high school English teacher, I have always loved my work. I love being an educator. I honor the fact that I get to walk into a classroom and lead young people every single day.

 

But even in a great school with incredible colleagues, teaching has been deeply challenging.

 

Like so many educators, I found myself facing emotional fatigue that felt confusing, personal to me, and powerless. For a long time, I blamed the ever-increasing workload and my approach to the work and managing student behaviors, in which I would overwork and need to get it just right, even though my work and my approaches were already strong.

 

Through deep self-reflection and opening this conversation with many other teachers, I came to understand the true strain of teaching comes from the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) emotional impacts that we encounter each day and that follow us home.

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I determined that teaching is an emotional profession, disguised as a physical profession with its endless lesson plans, assessments, emails, meetings, data, and on and on.

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Teaching interacts with who we are as individuals. It tests our boundaries, our personal sense of self, and it activates our personal triggers—whether we expect it to or not. Realizing this transformed my approach to education.

 

By developing deep self-awareness and the strategies to support who I am and what I need in my day-to-day to stay emotionally strong, I built a resilient mindset that has (most of the time) allowed me to protect my peace while remaining connected to all the things that I love about teaching. 

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Teaching is Emotional® was born out of this transformation. Now my mission is to make all educators—new and veteran—feel seen and validated, while sharing tools to remain grounded, confident, emotionally strong, and connected to the profession.

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Quick Facts & Highlights

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• Teacher: 21-Year High School English Teacher dedicated to teacher retention and emotional health

• Speaker: Keynote Speaker & PD Presenter for school districts, colleges, and educational Networks

• Founder: Teaching is Emotional® 

• Author: I Didn't Sign Up For This: One Classroom Teacher's Journey Through Emotional Fatigue to Personal Empowerment and Teaching is Emotional: Key Quotes to Get You Thinking About the Emotions of Teaching

• Working on Now: Interactive workbook, THIS Is What I Signed Up For

• Goal & Mission: To sponsor teachers who need extra love in their school year

• Personal Life: Wife, Mom of Two, lover of the beach, laughing, reading to my kids, life, and anything nonfiction​​

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