Can We Teach the Lifelong Skill of Thriving With Anxiety?

After growing up with severe anxiety and firsthand experiencing the lack of mental health resources in schools, Tessa (she/her) founded Upstream Education to ensure teachers have the tools to help their students manage anxiety and foster well-being. She received a B.S. in Social Entrepreneurship from the Watson Institute at Lynn University. Tessa also holds a 200 hour yoga teacher certificate from Strala Yoga. In 2016, Tessa won the Denver Public Schools Imaginarium Innovation Lab's Design Challenge for her idea to create a program of bite-sized, Tier 1 Mental Health tools for high school students. The following year, her first book, I Am Tessa, was published by One Idea Press. She often speaks on the topics of adolescent mental health, social entrepreneurship, and teacher professional development for organizations including Teach For America, Denver Public Schools, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, and the University of Notre Dame. In 2021, Tessa delivered her first TEDx talk called “The Power of 5 Minutes for Youth Mental Health.” Tessa is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and 2024 HopeLab Young Innovator in Behavioral Health awardee. In her spare time, Tessa loves to explore Colorado with her husband. She lives in Boulder.

About Upstream equips students with the ability to "name and tame" their stress. We start with the science of stress, specifically how our brains and bodies are biologically predisposed to respond to stress through the fight, flight, or freeze response. After students can "name" their stress, Upstream gives them a variety of concrete tools to "tame" that stress. Our tools are rooted in the practices of mindfulness, positive psychology, and positive self-talk.

Links:

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7304a6.htm

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2024/cognitive-behavioral-therapy-alters-brain-activity-in-children-with-anxiety

https://ccf.georgetown.edu/2022/03/24/research-update-childrens-anxiety-and-depression-on-the-rise/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9894765/

https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/features/anxiety-depression-children.html

https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/data.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKB7GZ0KAwo

https://www.coursehero.com/file/194915685/RA-Final-Rough-Draft/

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