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Hi there! Anita Garcia Sanchez here, the author behind WholeHearted School Counseling.

I’ve known since about the time I was five or six years old that I wanted to do something (hopefully good & helpful) for kids and classrooms.

I’ve got masters degrees in American Studies and Counseling, and have been a high school teacher, college advisor, and elementary school counselor.

I’m also a Mama Bear to 2 teen boys (and a cute cavadoodle named Koda).

And love to make things for families, teachers, counselors, and schools to use to support the social & emotional resilience of kids and teens.

Anita of WholeHearted School Counseling

NORTH STARS

NORTH
STARS

The north stars which orient WholeHearted stuff are:

All kids, and most of us grown-ups, too, do the best that we can, given the resources that we have, at any given moment.

Empathy, connection, compassion, kindness, and calm are contagious.

Tough challenges, mistakes, and vulnerabilities birth grit, self-efficacy and strength.  

SOME THINGS I BELIEVE IN

Black tea at 4am, kindness, libraries, showing up, being brave, hard work, a good pair of running shoes, second chances, free speech, mountain sunrises, family game night, mindful breaths, dog love, green chile, and chocolate.

And this, too: connection, love, courage, resilience, belonging, and agency are best realized as verbs that need to be practiced over and over again.

GOOD QUOTES

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."
-Alice Walker
"Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you."
-Anne Lamott
"Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.”
-Bruce Perry
"What you don’t feel, you can’t heal and what you don’t heal, you pass on to your children.”
-Carey Sipp
“Students care more about whether their teachers care than what their teachers know.”
-Eric Jensen
"The children who need love the most will always ask for it in the most unloving ways.”
--Russell Barkley
"When little people are overwhelmed by big emotions, it's our job to share our calm, not join their chaos.”
-L.R. Knost
"When we deny our stories, they define us. When we own our stories, we get to write a brave new ending.”
-Brené Brown
"You can't teach children to behave better by making them feel worse. When children feel better, they behave better.”
-Pam Leo
"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”
-Fred Rogers
"Challenging behavior occurs when the demands and expectations being placed upon a child outstrip the skills they have to respond adaptively.”
-Ross Greene
"Self-care isn't just about bubble baths: on a deeper level, it's about staying connected to ourselves and being true to who we are and how we want to be.”
-Kristin Souers