My story didn't start with teaching.
It started years earlier, in a childhood marked by instability, violence, and constant upheaval - the kind of childhood that forces you to grow up fast and carry truths that others often never see.
Those early experiences didn't just shape me - they became the foundation of why I eventually stepped into schools as a teacher, and why I am here now, creating this project.
Imagine a seven-year-old girl whose whole life begins unravelling one piece at a time. Not in a single catastrophic moment, but through a series of moves, losses, dangers, and adult failures that no child should ever have to absorb.
One week, she is living in what she believes is a stable home.
The next, everything starts to shift - a mother caught up in the grip of trauma, a stepfather dealing drugs, violence simmering beneath the surface, and a happy childhood that begins to fracture under the weight of instability.
What follows is years of movement, fear, and uncertainty.
Thirteen homes in two years. Shelter beds. Temporary hotel rooms. Foster homes. Strangers' couches. Even an abandoned house with no electricity, no running water, and walls covered in mold and insects - a place where she lay awake at night wondering how this had become her life.
During those same years, she cycled through six Portland Public elementary schools, multiple middle schools - including HB Lee from the Reynolds School District - before finally graduating as a first-generation graduate from Reynolds High School in 2014, the same year our school community endured the tragedy of a campus shooting.
Stability became something other kids had.
Survival became the only thing she understood.
And that little girl was me.
When the violence ended, the aftermath didn't.
My stepfather went to prison.
My mother - traumatized, exhausted, deeply wounded - was suddenly raising three children alone.
My siblings' father was gone, and they were left with no one.
So at 10 years old, I stepped in.
Not because anyone told me to - but because someone had to.
I became the one who woke them up, made their meals, packed their lunches, checked their backpacks, braided their hair, wiped their tears.
I spent my teens trying to guard two children who needed safety, structure, and love in a world where our mother was too broken to give it.
I was a child raising children.
And while that responsibility nearly swallowed me, it also planted a mission in me so deep it has never left:
Children deserve better than this.
They deserve stable adults.
They deserve safe schools.
They deserve to feel wanted, loved, and capable.
By my junior year of high school, I knew exactly who I wanted to become.
I wanted to be the teacher I needed - the one who would look a hurting child in the eyes and truly see them.
Not judge them. Not write them off. Not punish their survival instincts. But to help them realize they are capable of creating a different future.
I wanted to go back to the very communities I grew up in - not to escape them, but to lift children from within them.
But even in those early years, I knew teaching wasn't my final destination - it was my beginning.
At sixteen, I didn't yet know the language of systems change, reform, advocacy, or leadership - but I did know that stepping into a classroom would show me where I was meant to go next. I trusted that if I followed my heart into teaching, the experience would reveal the next door I was meant to walk through.
I have never been the kind of person who stays in one role out of comfort. My path has always been (and will always be) about listening deeply to where I feel called.
Teaching was the first step, not the end point. And as the years unfolded, the classroom did exactly what I always believed it would: it made my next calling impossible to ignore.
This project is that calling.
And I know it won't be the last time I build something bigger than myself.
This is simply the next evolution of the purpose I've carried since I was a teenager: to follow truth, to follow impact, and to go wherever children need me most.
So I pursued education with everything I had. I earned my degree summa cum laude. I studied trauma, human development, inquiry-based learning, and the science of teaching.
I volunteered in schools across Portland Public. I student taught in Beaverton, where I saw what it looks like when schools have stability, resources, and systems that work.
And then I started teaching in the same district that I grew up in - Reynolds.
What I found there broke my heart in ways only someone who lived it as a child could understand.
I walked into classrooms full of children whose eyes looked like mine did at seven.
Children who were hungry.
Children who were exhausted.
Children who were carrying trauma in their bodies.
Children who had learned to survive long before they learned how to read.
But it wasn't the only trauma they brought from home -
it was the trauma that unfolded inside school walls every single day.
If you walk into some of these buildings for even an hour, you'll understand more than any district report will ever tell you.
If you stay for a day, you will see things you can never unsee.
I saw:
children running off campus regularly, sprinting past classrooms and out the doors while multiple staff chased after them
multiple fights breaking out at once - Kindergarteners through fifth graders hitting, kicking, biting, screaming from a place of raw overwhelm
hallways that felt like triage, where one crisis would only pause because another one had already started
teachers frozen in their own classrooms, unable to call for help because every single available staff member was already responding to a meltdown, a runaway student, or a violent outburst
children sobbing behind closed doors, hiding under desks, or shutting down so deeply that their silence felt heavy in the room
curriculum so disengaging and outdated that even teachers with passion struggled to make it meaningful
a system stretched so thin that "support" existed in policy but not in practice
There was one student I will never forget. After multiple mandated reports for physical and emotional harm, she was suddenly withdrawn from school. No transer records ever arrived. No re-enrollment ever appeared in the system. I called CPS. I called the police. I called again. I was told that because it isn't illegal for a child to be kept out of school, and because risk "couldn't be proven", no wellness check would be done.
To this day, she has never resurfaced in the education system.
That was the moment I understood something devestating:
some children can disappear from the system completely - and no one is required to look for them.
Every day, I watched children try to learn in an environment where their nervous systems were in survival mode.
Every day, I watched staff try to care for children while they were falling apart themselves.
Then came the $23 million district deficit for the 2025-2026.
Reynolds - already one of the most under-resourced districts in the region - announced:
110 full-time staff layoffs
10 furlough days for remaining staff, intentionally scattered throughout the school year so employees couldn't qualify for unemployment
a later vote that forced educators to choose between losing 76 more colleagues or losing even more of their already unlivable income
As a full time teacher working 50-60 hour weeks, pouring thousands of dollars into my classroom, I made $48,000 a year as a single mother.
Teachers weren't asked to choose a budget strategy.
They were asked to choose which group of people would suffer more.
The truth is, educators didn't burn out because they failed. They burned out because the system asked them to do the impossible - and then punished them for not being superhuman.
And through all of this, none of us were allowed to tell the truth.
Silence became policy.
Silence became culture.
Silence became survival.
But silence protects systems -
never children.
The School Truth Project wasn't born out of anger.
It was born out of love - for children, for teachers, and for communities who deserve transparency, honest, and hope.
As layoffs mounted, as crises piled up, as the truth became dangerous to speak aloud, I realized:
If the people inside the schools cannot safely tell the truth, then someone outside the hierarchy must protect it.
I knew I had the lived experience, the professional experience, and the moral clarity to do it - and the distance from the system to do it safely.
So I built this project myself.
In my townhouse.
On my old laptop.
With no money, no team, no institution behind me.
Just conviction.
Just lived truth.
Just a belief that children deserve better - and that the public deserves to know what is happening behind the doors of their own schools.
I am not here to destroy districts.
I am here to reveal reality.
I am here to give educators a safe voice.
I am here to show families the truth.
I am here to help communities finally understand what their children are experiencing so we can build something better.
I am only one person -
but I refuse to say silent.
This project was built for the children who are trying to survive worlds adults don't see.
For the teachers carrying impossible burdens.
For the families who deserve transparency.
For the communities ready to change the future.
Your story matters.
Your truth matters.
And together, we can create the kind of education system every child deserves.
Thank you for being part of this movement.