MISSIONYOUTH WELLNESSBLOG

For over two decades, I’ve had the honor of standing at the front of classrooms—middle school, elementary, special education, and everything in between. No matter the grade level, student ability, school location, or academic expectation, one thing has always held true: students excel when they feel safe, seen, heard, and valued. I’ve watched students who were written off by others transform into confident learners. I’ve taken over classrooms midyear, stepped into unfamiliar school environments, and inherited struggling rosters. Still, each year—without fail—growth happened. Not because I had the perfect strategy or ideal resources, but because I created an environment where wellness, community, trust, and structure were embedded from day one. Well before it became a trend or a district initiative, I was integrating social-emotional learning into my everyday instruction. I didn’t call it “wellness education” back then—I just knew that in order to truly teach, I had to reach. And to reach students, I had to show them they mattered. After 20+ years of running my classrooms this way, I began to recognize a deeper calling: to share this framework with other educators, schools, and communities. Not to replace what’s already working—but to fill the gap that’s been quietly widening for over a decade. Student well-being is in crisis. Test scores continue to rise in priority while mental health falls lower on the list. We’ve dropped the ball—and our students are paying the price. Mission Youth Wellness was born out of this conviction. With God's wisdom and grace, I’ve developed a complete system—M.Y. Wellness 360—that combines research-backed wellness practices, culturally relevant SEL curriculum, and intuitive digital tools that make it easy for schools to implement. It's the same system I’ve used in my own classrooms for years. Now, it’s scalable. Now, it’s shareable. Now, it’s time. I may only be able to reach 100 students a year on my own. But with schools, counselors, and educators joining this mission, we can reach thousands. We can build a generation of students who are not only academically equipped, but emotionally resilient, mentally strong, and spiritually grounded. This isn’t just a program. It’s my life’s work. And I believe I was created to do this—exactly at this moment in time.