Candida and Jo-Ann introduce ourselves and why we are doing this podcast.
We met on the first day of college orientation and have been best friends through a range of training and career paths and through parenting our kids into young adulthood. Jo-Ann now teaches English to teens with mental health needs, and Candida consults to school districts about student mental health. We have spent many hours talking about the intersections between our professional spheres, with our lived experiences as parents always in the mix.
As the phrase Youth Mental Health Crisis has emerged in the media, we often found ourselves brainstorming about how schools and education systems could be causing some of the problems and, at the same time, how they could be foundational in addressing them. Given the scope of these challenges we realized that these critical conversations needed to happen on a much bigger platform. We wanted to talk to people who are working on solutions and to get all the players sharing ideas and supporting each other.
In this brief first episode, we talk about how we first met and the journey that brought us to creating this podcast. Listen to our conversation and then check out our inaugural episodes for fascinating discussions with experts working to change our thinking about and our approaches to mental health in school.
