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Sometimes talking with someone outside of your inner circle might bring a fresh perspective. If you need to “talk-process”, or assistance making a tough decision, this plan might be a good fit for you!
How might complacency or lack of enthusiasm be keeping you from pursuing your dreams and goals? This plan will help you get to the root of the problem and create an action plan for resolution!
Does it seem like there are roadblocks at every turn? When you choose this plan, we will work on breaking restrictive thinking patterns while discovering your purpose and setting short and long-term goals.
Are strongholds or restrictive thinking keeping you from living a life of happiness? Would you like to have breakthrough in your faith, relationships, or career? Together we’ll partner to refine your truth by breaking bondages, strengthening your growth mindset and establishing internal peace and freedom.
The rapid change in education has created new opportunities for schooling! Although this is exciting, it’s also equally overwhelming! What’s the right curriculum, co-op group, academic pod, instructor, charter school, learning program? Where do I even begin? So many questions...let me help! My 15 years of public and homeschool experience combined with coaching experience will help you navigate unchartered territory and assist you in creating a design that works! Whether you’re an educator starting something new or a family creating something unique, I can help provide the tools and resources needed to create something amazing!
Let’s talk through those mixed thoughts and bring clarity to the confusion.
You can do this and I can help! Whether it’s deciding on and implementing a new curriculum or trying to figure out your daily routine, I can help you create an effective and organized education design!
Don’t throw in the towel, believe it or not the friction you’re feeling is a good thing! It tells you what you’re doing is not working, but that doesn’t mean you’ve failed. I can offer assistance and help you find success in the struggle!
Are you feeling like you might need more structured one-on-one assistance? Through consulting, I’ll do the heavy lifting, helping you make informed decisions and create a plan for the future.
I was a public school teacher for 13 years and can tell you firsthand that public educators are not properly equipped to serve every child in their classroom. I’m pretty confident any teacher will tell you there’s much more to molding a young mind than benchmark scores and daily attendance, which is a big focus for public schools and their qualifications for funding.
My stance? Focus needs to be placed on serving the “whole child”. However, year after year teachers’ resources are consistently cut leaving them stranded without the proper resources to serve their students’ needs.
This brings me to our personal public school experience as parents. Our family made a big move to a new town and purchased a home close to a school that was described as “a public school with a private school feel”. We were hesitant, but given the reviews decided to enroll our son in Kindergarten! Although there was hesitation, we went in with an open mind, high hopes, and full of excitement!! Unfortunately, our Kindergarten year did not go as planned, in fact, it was filled with lots of frustration and tears.
Then 1st grade came! We had taken the summer to decompress, and were ready for a new year! However, after a few months, it was pretty evident this year was not going to be much different. I was so discouraged, I prayed and prayed for God to give me wisdom and better understanding, different parenting strategies, different perspectives, and different ways of mothering. I felt so inadequate as a parent and desired to be different because I felt like I was failing my son. I just wanted the battle of school and home-life frustration to cease.
Strong-willed kids! That was my thing, I was the teacher that welcomed them into my classroom and made great strides! Why could I not give this to my child? I was so discouraged and overwhelmed with feelings of failure, frustration, and anxiety.
One day while picking my daughter up from preschool (the preschool my son previously attended) I ran into the director and shared some of our “school” story. It hit me like a ton of bricks! When my son was in preschool he was thriving. Then, we entered public school and I saw a decline in self-esteem and confidence and a rise in frustration, anger, and poor choices. What was the difference? Preschool provided small class sizes, which allowed attention to be placed on my son’s specific needs compared to his current school situation where he was competing for 1/25th of his teacher’s attention. The preschool design created space for my whole child to be served which was lost when we entered the public school system.
I had pondered alternative education, but at the time all of the charter schools were full or had an extensive waitlist and private was so expensive! I kicked the thought of homeschooling around a few times but was terrified it would further damage our already strained relationship. Then COVID happened! I decided to take the leap into homeschooling with the goal of trying it for one year and then reevaluating, giving myself an out if it didn’t work. For us, homeschooling was a huge blessing!
Don’t let my excitement fool you, entering homeschool life was scary! People would say, “Oh, you’re a teacher, so I’m sure it will be easy!” Yes, in some ways this was true, but my mind was trained to perform within the restricted guidelines of the public school system, and the amount of freedom I felt was unnerving. It took several months of reminding myself to step outside the box before I actually stepped outside the box! Then, I had to remind myself not to step right into another box and use the freedom to our advantage. Needless to say, most of our first year of homeschooling was spent “unschooling” and retraining our traditional ways of thinking.
Homeschool life has been filled with a lot of trial and error, but the affirmations we received were clear and concrete. My relationship with my son has been completely transformed, not because I’m a superhero mom, but because his needs are being met. One of my biggest fears, in the beginning, was completely shattering our already strained relationship, but being together all the time actually made me press into the tension and figure out ways to strengthen our relationship. He has shown great progress and I’m so proud of both of us! Our close friends and family have seen a unique shift in our family unit and more specifically in our mother-son relationship. The public school design was not serving my son’s needs, in fact, it was doing all of us a disservice! By no means are our days perfect, but they are filled with growing mutual respect, enriched and fun education, lots of hugs, I love yous, and words that express his unwavering desire to continue!!!
Please hear me when I say this!
YOU know what your child needs! Don’t stay in something that is not working, you have options!
Don’t get me wrong, I do believe the public school system design works for some children, but it’s not designed to serve all children. I can’t tell you how many times I was in meetings as a teacher with parents sitting across from me, broken-hearted because they didn’t know what to do. Every year was a struggle, every year was a fight, and every school year caused more strain on their personal relationship with their child. Were they bad parents? Did they have bad kids? Did they have bad teachers? NO. They were caught in a system that didn’t work for them!
If you are feeling the same way, trust me when I say, you can do this! Do you know who knows your child best? YOU! Education is changing in a big way, and I’m here to help you determine what alternative education plan works for your family! You are not stuck, there’s a solution and I can help you discover the right path to take!
Accepting life’s transitions has become a normal process for me, but I don’t say this lightly, it’s taken a lot of work to get there! I was the person who was in control, had her life planned out, on the right path, and checking all of the boxes along the way! I knew what I wanted out of life and was determined to have it all!
I was 22, in my first year of teaching, engaged, and planning a wedding! Life was going just as planned!
Unfortunately, it all started to unravel when I lost one of my best friends to cancer. This threw me into a state of grief I had never experienced and I started questioning a lot about life. I was paralyzed with fear of the unknown and felt so alone. I decided to break my engagement, which was a sound decision, but I also broke a lot of hearts and lost relationships in the process. I was so angry. How could this be happening? I prided myself on always making the “right” decisions, so what happened? Why was my life such a mess?
I didn’t know or understand it at the time but losing my friend triggered past trauma I’d suppressed from childhood. I tried counseling, but it was too painful, so I pulled it together and moved forward, in typical “Brea” fashion. That was my method of operation, push it down, move forward and make it look good.
Fast forward 5 years, I met and married my husband! It was my first marriage, but not his, and our new marriage included his 3 boys! At the time, I had been teaching for about 6 years and thought “Kids? I’ve got this!” Needless to say, I did not have “this”!
Our first 2 ½ years of marriage consisted of newlywed adjustments, juggling having two kiddos together, and figuring out how to function as a blended family. Our life was downright crazy! We were literally just taking it one day at a time. I had no control over anything and was trying to maintain a life of perfectionism. Trust me, I looked, there’s no handbook for the life I’d stepped into!
When our youngest was 6 months old, we received the devastating phone call my middle step-son (age 14) had committed suicide. This was not something any of us could have prepared for, we were devastatingly heartbroken, lost and so confused. Losing my stepson threw me into a downward spiral. The coping mechanisms I’d used in the past were not going to serve me in this space. I could not “keep swimming” through this and needed professional help. With the horrific loss of a child, postpartum emotions, past abuse and trauma, and the continuous fight for perfectionism, I was in extremely bad shape!
By God’s Grace, I found the perfect counselor to walk me through grief, childhood trauma, and blended family life! After 2 ½ years of dedication and hard work, I was equipped with the knowledge and skills I needed to move forward! I had graduated and in a BIG way!
Six months out of counseling I found myself in a state of confusion. I was feeling discouraged and carrying the shame of counseling failure. I did the work, dissected the past, gained the knowledge, and tools, but functioning in the present as the new healthy version of me was exhausting! The application of counseling became overwhelming. I didn’t feel the need to return to counseling but knew I needed something.
God’s timing! This is when I discovered my coach! She assisted me in taking the strategies learned in counseling and helped me apply them to my everyday life. I was redeemed and restored through the counseling process, but found authority and freedom through coaching! My abuse, trauma, and grief used to be my story, but now it’s just a part of my story.
Now, I live in the present and plan for the future! I no longer let the past define me. I made the decision to stop living in the pain the devil created and started living a Romans 8:28 life! At one point, I was so crippled with worry and fear that setting goals and making future plans seemed hopeless, but you should see my vision board now!
This is my passion for you! You were created for a purpose, and your creator will not abandon his purpose in you! If you let Him, he will take the struggles, hurt and pain, and use it for His Glory! I believe God has been equipping and preparing me for you! A divine meeting! He gave me a purpose to become a vessel, assisting others in breaking false identity patterns, fear, and bondage replacing it with authority, freedom, peace, and enjoyment!