Welcome to the Teacher Career Coach podcast with your new host, Elizabeth Sudo.

She started her teaching career in 2014. She found she needed a career change after all the changes that pandemic brought to the teaching world.

So she transitioned outside of the classroom into an administrative assistant role and now works as an operations manager for a tech startup.

Get ready for discussions on all things related to teacher transitions, interview prep,

addressing burnout in the classroom, and so much more. Here's your host, Elizabeth Sudo.

Welcome back to the Teacher Career Coach podcast. You can find us on all your social channels at

teacher career coach or on our website, teachercareercoach.com. Hi, and welcome back to our next

episode. As students return to school after the pandemic, mental health challenges

have reached a crisis point. Only 48% of public schools can fully meet students' mental health needs,

a number that's decreasing amid rising demand.

Today we meet with Karen Foley, the president of JPA Chicago, a nonprofit,

to discuss how they are addressing these challenges.

We talk about their connect-to-kids program that supports teachers

and on how we need to support educators at the

core to build from here. Hope you enjoy this episode. Well, welcome back, everyone. Today,

we're very excited to have Karen Foley with us. Welcome, Karen. Good to be here. Thanks.

Thank you. Well, we're so excited to learn today about you,

what your organization does, JPA, Chicago. So we'd love to learn first a bit about your

background and what got you passionate about working with students and being in education.

What a great question. I'd to ask this question of other people because I usually find life is not a linear

progression for most people. It wasn't for me. I grew up sitting on the front porch with both

grandmothers, but in the back porch of my grandparents' home was my grandfather's

...