She does it all, Cathleen Beachboard balances being a teacher, author and mental health advocate, all while being a mother to seven. Even while juggling her career and home life, Beachboard still manages to be an active member in the community. She’s constantly doing different projects to help others, and has even had her own TED talk.

Starting her 16th year of teaching, Beachboard says she’s worked her experiences from studying psychology into her teaching style, “I can generally feel out students and see when they need extra help and a boost of support, and so because of that my number one concern is making sure that students feel like they can be successful and giving them a path to get there…” After closing off her middle school teaching career last year, Beachboard began teaching English here at FHS.

Beachboard published her book “The School of Hope” in early 2022 with the hope to impact people of the community with “manageable tools to improve your overall wellness and well-being which will transfer to achievement in anything you do.” The book covers the journey from trauma and anxiety to achievement and resilience. Beachboard wants to give readers “manageable steps for feeling better every day.” She says, “It’s being proactive and not reactive.”

Beachboard mentions that she is beginning to work on another book as well. Beachboard said, “it’s either going to lean more towards hope and parenting a child, or hope and leadership. I’m not sure because I’m still fleshing out the idea.”

As a mental health advocate, Beachboard feels “like more people need to be mental health advocates because at this point we’ve all been through the pandemic, and that was kind of shocking and kind of sucked for everybody.” She explains how having a good mentality when you’re coming back from a worldwide pandemic is important, saying “We need to get rid of the stigma that talking about mental health is a bad thing. It’s a good thing!”