A night owl hits snooze on a 6am alarm. An introvert goes to work as a teacher. I've built self care into my daily routines by listening to my body and practicing non-judgement with myself. I reflect on my life from a wider perspective, not day to day. My morning routine on workdays takes 20-30 minutes. The night before work I pick out clothes, fill the kettle, pack my lunch, anything I can to save time in the morning. The past year my morning routine has centered around making coffee and sometimes a protein smoothie. This sets me up to have a little sips of joy through out my morning at work. The hazelnut creamer is the most important part for me. Working as a teacher is emotionally draining, even more so for an introvert. I recharge during my prep hour by listening to my favorite podcasts while I clean the classroom. After work varies depending on the day. Sometimes I go play Dungeons and Dragons with my friends, or have a night class; otherwise I'll take a nap, rub my feet, cook a nice dinner and watch Star Trek or another show while I write in my bullet journal. Bullet journaling is a new hobby I started to make tending to my calendar and agenda into a creative outlet. I gave myself permission to not do hobbies on workdays. Saturdays are for sleeping in, crafts and visiting friends, Sunday mornings are for flexibility training or Dance Church. Recording my time spent on my interests and goals in my bullet journal helps me see that even though I sometimes feel bad for being too tired to work on them on workdays, I'm still investing my time in what I value on a monthly scale.

In a world full of polyester clothing, what do you do when you need a fire-safe costume to fire dance? You sew it yourself! I love sewing because I can use geometry to redesign my mom's old clothes, or thrift clothes, into new pieces of clothing, fitted to my body, and give a second life to clothes that would otherwise be thrown in the trash. I love the challenge of puzzling a unique pattern onto the limited amount of fabric from an oversized shirt or skirt. When I'm preparing to fire dance, I often can not find fire-safe costumes that are 100% cotton, wool, or bamboo. I can't sacrifice safety and won't sacrifice style so, I make my own costumes! Wearing clothes that I made brings great satisfaction and a sense of pride when I can respond to a compliment with, "thanks, I made it myself!" Ten years ago I had no idea my love of sewing would have such a practical application. I found the dance form of hula hooping. Yes, those plastic circles that little kids play with and gym teachers use for games. Hula hoops have led me to connect with other hoop dancers in my community, build friendships with the people I now call my best friends, travel the country, and even earn a little money by performing. I now find myself helping organize stage shows and creating choreography for a local circus company, it's a nice break from my job as a substitute elementary teacher. There is a whole dance community that does crazy moves with hoops that take months of practice to master. Hula hoops are just the tip of the iceberg of the larger Flow Arts community. The Flow Arts community has a circuit of festivals to take workshops and learn new skills. I attended my first flow festival in 2019. I was invited to be an organizer for Camp Fire Retreat my first year when I inquired to volunteer. That weekend I made many strong connections with the fire and flow community. In the next year, I went to the West coast to perform fire-hoop with a fire troupe at an event of 80,000 people, to the East coast to organize at another flow festival where I could take more workshops and meet people across the Flow Arts community. This year I am the assistant general manager for Camp Fire Retreat. It's a great feeling to give back to my community and keep this event that has influenced my life going for the next generation of new hula hoopers and flow artists to grow from. I am proud of the skills I’ve mastered over the years and how hooping has taught me that with resilience, I can learn and do anything. I am thankful for the flow arts community, these opportunities I hadn't dreamed of before, and the feeling when I gift my friends a piece of clothing I made and say "it's fire safe."

Like a library, the most important thing for storing information, in your brain or a library, is having a system to intake, process, and store all the information. Systems allow us to stay focused. I intake my studies in a consistent environment. I study in the same spot with the same lofi music every time. Having a study desk makes it easy to reach for any office supply I need for my notes within arm's reach. I never need to get up to find more paper, my favorite pen, or even to reach my backpack! When I didn't my own desk I made a little sign that said "study zone." I take my notes in the same style every week, each class requires a different style but in general, I use black ink for my notes and blue ink for commentary on my notes. The blue commentary helps me process the most complex pieces of information and emphasizes these important points that need more attention for learning. Having high-quality pens has made note-taking very satisfying! I store all my due dates in Notion. Notion allows me to filter my assignments by the due date so I only can see what is due within the next week. This helps me prioritize my assignments and manage stress by only focusing on one week at a time. I sort my upcoming assignments by due this week, in progress, and submitted. It's nice to be able to see what I've accomplished. The last thing I do to optimize my studies is to take care of my body. I keep my brain well-fed and I take plenty of naps and have good sleep hygiene. Sleep masks are great for this. There's no sense in storing books in a crumbling library so take care of yourself.

My vision is to show the wonderful community I found through hula hooping and fire dancing as well as share the resilience it has taught me. Hoop dancing taught me I can learn and do anything with enough practice and the right equipment. These circles have led me to connect with other hoopers in my community, build friendships with the people I now call my best friends and travel the country. I was eager to attend my first flow festival. I was invited to be an organizer for the event my first year when I inquired to volunteer. That weekend I made many strong connections with the fire community. In the next year, I went to the West coast to perform with a fire troupe at an event of 80,000 people, to the East coast to organize at another flow festival. I am excited to have found my community in fire dancing, it’s very supportive and admittedly can be competitive at times but this drives us to push ourselves to do our best and take creative risks. If chosen, I will use this money for three things. 1) Finance my math degree to be a math teacher (so I’m not a starving artist/math is awesome). 2) Pay for contortion and fire-eating classes to build my skills. 3) Buy accessories and fabric to sew matching costumes for my performance troupes. Having matching costumes will allow us to look more professional on stage and increase our production value. I am proud of what we make as a community and the skills I’ve mastered over the years and excited for our future performances. Thank you for this opportunity!

I've taught many sessions on Growth Mindset working at girl scout camps, the main point we taught the girls was adding "yet" to negative statements. "I can't... yet." "I'm no good... yet." Now after my deep dive into planning, building healthy habits, and learning technical skills; I'd like to go back and add how I've discovered growth mindset fuels a journey to success. A growth mindset supports these steps to success and conversely is cultivated by following these steps. 1. Accept yourself. Rather than trying to drastically change your habits, build your goals around how you work best. Stack habits you want onto established habits. 2. Track your progress. You can't celebrate incremental progress without knowing where you started. 3. Plan, and plan to revise your plan. 4. Acknowledge why you failed and what you learned from your failure. Maybe it was the timing, I learned that I personally succeed more when I plan my exercise for the evenings. Or maybe you took on too much at once and realized there was a part of skill you need to break down and drill before you can achieve your larger goal, which leads us to... 5. Break down your goal into teeny tiny components. This ensures you don't overlook a small part that may be key or time-consuming. And you can... 6. Celebrate the small wins and reward yourself. As a reward for checking so many items off my to-do list or reaching a milestone, my reward is spending money on something that's helping me reach my goals such as a personal training session, fitness equipment, or craft supplies. 7. Don't hold yourself to other people's presentation of success. You can't be someone else, you are the best person at being you. Your success will look unique to you.

Patience is important to building trusting relationships with my students of any age. Trust is necessary to keep students engaged and to take academic risks. It is moments when I pause, hold my tongue, wait to see what my students are about to do or say that we build trust. I see other youth workers, and admittedly myself sometimes, snap at kids saying "what are you doing?" "sit down," "be quiet." Sometimes in one breath leaving the student feeling confused, thinking "do you want an answer or to be quiet?" Trust is lost, feelings of emotional safety dwindle. The results are students less likely to come to teachers at all for little things, with answers to questions, or moments when they need to be heard. Maybe years of this throughout their education is why preschoolers raise their hands before the teacher asks the question and middle schoolers just stare, unwilling to risk answering. It's carpet time, a student gets ups, the inpatient teacher thinks the student is unfocused, about to goof off, worst-case derail the focus of the class. The impatient teacher snaps "sit back down" the student responds in defense "I need a drink of water." The teacher doesn't know what to say, or maybe they defend themselves by saying "not during carpet time." The class watching now knows each movement they make might be criticized and scolded. Their focus shifts back to the activity, time and trust eroded slightly. In the same scene, the patient teacher doesn't acknowledge the out-of-place student with anything more than a glance. Fighting the urge to mimic their upbringing with impatient teachers, the teacher stays focused on the activity. Trust and focus amongst the class are maintained and the teachers save energy by avoiding a battle that never needed to be fought.

My favorite artist IS a scientist, so one name immediately came to mind and I can hardly contain my excitement about April Jennifer Choi. I first heard about her through my community of fire dancers, in which April Choi is a household name for her performance skills as a fire eater, instructor, and world records with a whip; I was stunned upon learning she wasn't just a successful performer, she works with my dream employer, April Choi is an engineer at NASA!!! April Choi is also very friendly, and open about her mental health; we are in the same circus performance troupe on Facebook and when I said I wanted to work on a fire-eating skill SHE MADE ME A HALF HOUR VIDEO! April Choi is the role model that inspires me to literal tears that it is possible to pursue ALL my dreams.