"What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation." -Glenn Close

There’s not a lot about life that I know 100% to be true, but this I know for sure: I am not a quitter. No matter how bad things have gotten and no matter how much I hate something, I have never once given up and walked away. I pride myself on the fact that I stay in the rubble, fight my way out, and do whatever I can to lead others forward with a solution. For the past five years and three months, I’ve sacrificed my mental and physical well-being for what I believed in. No matter how hard it got, or how badly I wanted to, I never quit. I made commitments to those kids, and I followed through with them. Until now. I’m 27 years old, it’s September of my 6th year of teaching, and I quit. I’m 27 years old. In my SIXTH YEAR of teaching. And I’m burnt out. You heard me. I burnt out at TWENTY SEVEN. To tell you the truth, I was completely burnt out at 26. By the end of my fifth year of teaching, I was re-considering everything I’d ever wanted in my life. I questioned why I ev

Rough title to this post, am I right? It'll make sense soon. I'm going to be honest. I first started this blog when I lived abroad in college. I added to it when I wanted to share exciting things happening in my classroom during my exotic two years in the Mississippi Delta. But, when it came to the tough stuff, I avoided the blog. I'll just tell it how it is:  It is so much more fulfilling to make people think I'm fucking awesome. Teaching kids, traveling the world, telling funny stories, and posting pictures of the cutest vet-determined-obese little rescue dog in the entire world. See what I'm saying though? SO FREAKING CUTE. But here's the dirty truth: I have depression and anxiety. I've been in therapy for 8 years. I've been on medication for 5 years, with some shifts and changes in the prescriptions if they weren't working. I've tried exercise, I've tried meditation, I've tried "positive thinking" and more. I've

Good thing blogging isn't my career, because I'd be drowning in even MORE debt if it was. (Grad school, betchez, I mean really $$$$$$$$$). Anyways, I know what I said. Blah blah blah "I'm going to blog every week this year!" Blah blah blah "Hannah, you should document your experiences more often..." blah blah blah "I'm going to commit to my blog this year..." yeah yeah yeah. Okay. So follow-through was not my strong suit here. Or we could just say that follow-through got left behind in Minnesota when I moved back down here. My bad. I SAID MY BAD. (anna, lydia, nicole) Well it's February 2015 and things they are a-happenin round these parts. To spare you the details, my fall semester started out SO GREAT....and then derailed quicker than ever. What FRESH HELL my friends. FRESH HELL. I can't pinpoint when it all started to go downhill, and I don't think I want to, because then I'd have to relive it. It was pretty much a repe

Classroom Jobs 1. line leader (#1 in line, alphabetical order, will always be line leader) 2. door holder (#2 in line, alphabetical order, will always be door holder) 3. lunch helper (pass out napkins every day a lunch) 4. lights (turn lights on and off when asked) 5. smartboard (turns smartboard on and off in morning and at end of day) 6. messenger (take messages to other classrooms or the office) 7. safety monitor (get bandaids when teacher needs it, get nurse passes, escort to nurse, etc) 8. clip chart monitor (carries clip chart in the hallways) 9. door closer (closes and locks door when we enter the room) 10. paper passer (passes out papers for the teacher) 11. paper collector (collects papers and puts in alphabetical order for the teacher before putting in basket) 12. pencil collector (collects pencils and erasers at end of day, puts broken pencils in basket) 13. folder checker (checks folders for homework in the morning) 14. folder filler (put homework in folder

My beautiful and wonderful friend Anna Ayers Looby sent me a link today that really got me thinking. Here's the link: http://sspw.dpi.wi.gov/sspw_physicaled Basically it gave me the flashing reminder that my students NEED PHYSICAL ACTIVITY in their daily lives. Everyone should have a total of 60 minutes of some sort of physical activity every single day. Since my students only get P.E. twice a week, most of them just want to eat their snack instead of run around at recess, and the rest of their 8 hour day is spent sitting....majority of those minutes depend on me. Now, when your school and state have a deathly fear of failing and standards, objectives, mastery, and test scores are at the core of everything you do, it's easy to forget about the importance of educating well-rounded children. If you'd asked me to add physical activity to my classroom during my first year of teaching, I probably would have started crying (ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME I CAN HARDLY GET ALL THE

One of my main goals for my classroom this year is to teach my students how to communicate their emotions and use productive and healthy coping mechanisms. So, I introduce to Miss Forster's first grade class... ....DRUMROLL PLEASE..... The mood-o-meter!! Here's an example of a mood meter that I found online: Basically, here's how it works/how I want to use it. The colors can represent different types of feelings on the spectrum.  Blue: low energy/unpleasant=sad, depressed, sulky, tired, etc. Green: low energy/pleasant=happy, content, peaceful, calm, etc. Yellow: high energy/pleasant=excited, surprised, enthusiastic, etc. Red: high energy/unpleasant=angry, frustrated, annoyed, etc. In our classroom this year, we are going to start the year off by learning about this spectrum of emotions-->the mood meter. We'll discuss what the different colors represent, what someone looks like when they're feeling each emotion, what you feel like doing whe