I recently experienced failure at work for the first time ever. I had coordinated with a couple of my colleagues to run a Smashing Stereotypes event for the students at my school. Smashing Stereotypes events are what we run for our female members at VALHALLA Strength – South Brisbane. They are designed to educate and…
Author: Krystal Gagen-Spriggs
Teacher Librarian, avid reader, educator, technology enthusiastic, gym owner, powerlifter, life long learner.
I sing because I’m happy
At the end of my blog post “Mental Health Reflection” I promised a follow up about the benefits of singing for depression. Well, here it is! My psychologist suggested to me that as I have a background in singing, that I might like to start singing once a day for at least 20mins. She didn’t…
Book Club Fun
The ladies at my gym, to whom we refer to as Valkyries, had been bugging me for weeks to start up a book club. I finally pulled my finger out and organised it. I chose three books for them to vote on, recorded myself talking about them (I’d only read one of the three so…
Science Fiction becomes science
Science Fiction is one of my favourite genres, in fact, I’m finding that I’m reading and watching more Sci-Fi than anything else at the moment. I think one of the reasons I love it is because Science Fiction is quite often a precursor to the leaps and bounds of Science. An example of this is…
Fuzzy Mud – Sachar
When I first started at Mount Alvernia College in 2016, I was asked to take over the Readers Cup team. One of the books that year was Fuzzy Mud by Louis Sachar. Since reading it, I have recommended it to countless students and it is rarely on our shelves. I thought it was about time…
The strength community will not tolerate this…
Women lifting weights – it’s something that I am very passionate about and something that the general population seem to struggle with accepting. Just yesterday my husband had the pleasure of refereeing The Static Monsters World Championships on the Gold Coast and he witnessed some amazing feats of strength by both men and women. Unfortunately…
Feeling pretty chuffed!
I recently inherited the job of setting up and maintaining the website for VALHALLA Strength – South Brisbane and right now, I’m feeling quite proud of myself! We inherited the site earlier in the year. It was essentially a straight copy of the website for our sister gym on the north side of Brisbane: VALHALLA…
Murder Most Unladylike – Stevens
I read Murder Most Unladylike because we’ve had an increasing number of students in years 7 and 8 asking for “murder mysteries.” I have no real idea as to why these types of stories are becoming popular again, but as an avid reader of Agatha Christie in my early teens, I cannot complain! And so,…
The truth about our “why”
Have you ever told yourself that your goal was simply to “have fun?” Well, over the weekend we hosted a Smashing Stereotypes event at the gym and the presenter said something that really struck me. The presenter was Raeanne Pemberton, and she is a Strongwoman Competitor in the USA. She has a lot to say…
Mental health reflection
Disclaimer: I’m a little nervous about publishing this, but I’m going to because it’s something I’m extremely passionate about. I have been living as a hypocrite for the last 2 and a bit years, maybe even longer. Since working at Mt A, I can’t even remember the number of students I have told to reach…
The Lifting Librarian 