Help a teacher become a therapist!

My name is Audrey, and I'm a middle school teacher in the Bay Area.   I've wanted to work with kids since I was six years old, both as a therapist and a teacher.   I've been very fortunate to be the first person in my family to go to college.    After finishing my master's degree when my own kids were little,  I became a teacher!   I've been a teacher for 18 years and I LOVE my profession.   It is a privilege to work with youth, and inspire them to love learning and to believe that adolescence, although pretty tough, is just a phase, and that life holds so much for them...so many, many gifts.

For the last six years, I've volunteered as a  crisis and suicide counselor with an amazing local organization, Star-Vista.    I've also volunteered at their teen group home over the summer, and I've seen and heard stories that would melt your heart.   I know there is a need for therapists who also understand the school system.  
I've been deeply  inspired to help youth and their families on a deeper level than crisis intervention.   I vowed that when I got my own twin sons through college (not easy as a single parent on a teaching salary!) that I would go back to college to become a licensed therapist.  And I did go back to grad school in 2012 and entered my MFT program.  And I LOVE it!

I am currently in my last year  in the MFT licensure  Counseling Psych program at Notre Dame de Namur University, in Belmont.   I am very fortunate to be getting all A's, and I am already receiving offers of unpaid internships, a 1-year requirement of all MFT programs.  But it is incredibly expensive, and tuition rates went up again this year.

I am in the home stretch...my last year.  But I am out of money.  I must finish by 2018, because of licensure requirements by the Board of Behavioral Sciences.  So this is no time to slow down.   Working full time teaching, I can take 2 or 3 classes at a time, depending on my budget.  However, much of my paycheck is taken up with student loan repayments for my previous degree to become a teacher, so I am not eligible for further financial aid.  I have been paying as I go for the last four years, but sadly, I don't have the funds to continue this last year.    $9,600 will cover my Fall 2016 and Spring 2017 classes, which will be five more classes!

So, I am praying and wishing, and hoping that someone who also loves kids, who might be able to help, will see this, and help a teacher become more to her students than an educator.   Although I won't leave teaching, I will be able to offer counseling in the afternoons and evenings, and provide parent coaching and counseling on the weekends.  

This means so much to me that you read this.  I want to sign up for classes this fall, and finish this graduate program with the same commitment I have had.   The program is intense, but it's wonderful.  It's what I am meant to do.   And maybe, just maybe, you can help me find a way to achieve this life long dream.  

Thank you for being the wonderful kind of human being that helps someone achieve their goal.   I am forever grateful and I will never forget your kindness.