Every morning, kindergarten teacher Chrystal Mitchell writes motivational quotes on brightly-colored sticky notes.

Messages like “Life is tough, but so are you” and “The future is yours, go after it,” hang on the walls of her classroom for students to read. She also delivers them to her fellow teachers at Hillandale Elementary School in Durham.

“I like to figure out a message that’s going to resonate with me for the day, and I keep that positivity around me,” Mitchell said. “And then I share it with others.”

Her love for encouraging others doesn’t stop there. Mitchell texts her uplifting messages to several teacher groups chats. As a mom of a child with autism, she also started a support group for moms of kids with special needs, and has self-published a book, “I Can Do All Things,” filled with parenting strategies.

Zikia Leary, another kindergarten teacher at Hillandale, receives a positive Post-it from Mitchell every morning. Leary has created a wall of them in her classroom and said they help her stay grounded. She said this is just who Mitchell is.

“She loves, loves, loves to pour into people,” Leary said. “She’s the type of teacher that you would want your child to have.”

For Mitchell, her love for encouraging others is a way to return the support she’s been given over the years. Much of this support, she said, comes from the community she’s built in Durham Public Schools.

Mitchell has written dozens of Post-its and hung them outside her classroom.

A life touched by DPS

Mitchell attended schools in DPS from kindergarten through 12th grade. Both of her children go to schools in the district.

In college, she majored in fitness management at Barton College, but decided to get her degree in education at North Carolina Central University after working as a teacher’s assistant at Hillandale.

Now, Mitchell’s been at the school for over 18 years.

“Our school is very much like a family,” she said. “So everybody’s always willing to help each other and just learn from each other.”

The school is also how she met her husband, Kendrick Mitchell. He was working as a school bus driver when they met in 2010. After finishing carpool duty one day, one of her student’s mothers approached her in the hallway.

“She said, ‘Ms. Houpe, are you married?’ And I’m like, ‘No.’ And she was like, ‘Well, Kendrick keeps talking about how fine you look.’”

Both initially embarrassed, he ended up asking for her number. They got married a year later in Hillandale’s gym. Their reception was in the cafeteria.

A support system that shows up

The community Mitchell built has supported her during hard times. Fellow teachers helped her when she was struggling to pass the certification test to teach kindergarten through 6th grade.

“When I would have to retake the test, it was people here who would write me a check and say, ‘Chrystal, go take that test again.’ They just kept encouraging me not to give up.”

In 2022, Mitchell lost her mom to breast cancer. Afterwards, she went through her own health scares, undergoing a double mastectomy and three other unexpected surgeries. Then, her son was diagnosed with autism.

Two years old at the time and nonverbal, her son’s diagnosis reshaped her life both at home and in the classroom.

“I think that God made me a teacher because he knew I was going to have to learn how to take care of my son,” Mitchell said.

Learning strategies she used with special needs students became helpful at home. The experience led Mitchell to write “I Can Do All Things,” a book she said she needed when she first learned of her son’s diagnosis.

Still, Mitchell said it was hard to navigate all of this without her mom, who she talked to every day. During this time, her support system showed up for her.

Family members, friends and co-workers called and checked in, cooked meals and sent gift cards. When she ran out of paid time off, other teachers donated days. PTA parents came to the school and made sure all her copies were made for lesson plans.

“It means a lot,” Mitchell said. “I feel very grateful, because everybody doesn’t have that. So it must mean I’m doing something right for people to want to help me.”

A place where people are happy

It’s this support system, she said, that makes all the difference in a teacher’s career. Michael Bloom, principal at Hillandale, has known Mitchell for seven years and said the positive culture at the school is built by people being willing to ask for help.

“She just does the work,” Bloom said. “She doesn’t give up, she’s always here. And she’s not afraid to try new things and ask questions.”

A school culture where teachers and staff members are happy is important in a district like DPS, which has had a higher rate of teacher turnover and exits than other public school districts in the state in recent years.

Leary, who’s now been at Hillandale for four years, says she often peeks into Mitchell’s classroom to see what her students are doing. In down moments, she’ll read the notes Mitchell has given her over and over again.

“Even my kids have started to notice: ‘Ms. Mitchell brings you sticky notes every day. Like, what is it?’” she said. “And I just tell them she gives us motivation to keep going. To keep pushing.”