Written by: Andy Roesgen
JPA CHICAGO:
A FRESH START FOR CHICAGO'S MOST VULNERABLE SCHOOL KIDS
A 7-year-old girl, coming to school every day in one of Chicago's toughest neighborhoods, Karen Foley recalls, and always dressed head-to-toe in pink, right down to her pink lipstick. But the girl, who lived with her teenage mother and grandmother, was a terror: kicking and screaming in class so often that she was on the verge of being suspended.
A therapist from Foley's Juvenile Protective Association started working with the girl, using a dollhouse as therapy. In the dollhouse, the girl acted out violent and scary scenarios, Foley recalls. Over time, the therapist became a player in those dollhouse scenarios, and reached the girl, in an almost Helen Keller, "Miracle Worker" kind of way. By the end of the school year, the girl was back on track, staying out of trouble, and on her way to advancing to the next grade.
As Foley, the CEO puts it proudly;
JPA is often a "game-changer"
for Chicago's most vulnerable
school kids.
HUMBLE ROOTS, FAMOUS FOUNDER
If you're speeding down the Jane Addams Tollway, you might never guess that its namesake founded Chicago's Juvenile Protective Association (among her many social causes; Addams also helped found the ACLU).
The JPA that Addams developed 115 years ago was originally designed to give kids legal representation in the court system, kids who were poor, immigrant, or didn't speak the language, and hauled off to the jail.
As Foley puts it, "Jane Addams said, 'this is just not right, it's not just.'”
Public court services eventually took over that function, so JPA evolved into an organization that provides therapy for school kids, especially those from kindergarten through ninth grade.
And, as you might guess, there are plenty of kids in Chicago who need help, "Children whose ONE ticket out of poverty is their education,” says Foley. They are kids who face gang violence, abuse, homelessness and incarcerated parents, among other problems.
"Just as chronically hungry children can't focus, kids with chronically bad home lives can't concentrate, either,” says Foley.
JPA therapists go into the city's most troubled neighborhoods, into the schools, and work with kids who, as Foley puts it, simply can't sit down and hash out their feelings in one convenient session.
"You get labeled a 'bad kid', and children either 'freeze', 'flee' or 'fight'. Some kids internalize it, other suffer in silence. The message rolls around in their head: I'm not good enough, nothing good in my life will ever happen, I must be a bad kid that someone did this to me."
But the privately funded JPA also works with teachers, knowing that in some of those tough neighborhoods; the teachers are as stressed out as the kids.
Foley says it's like an airline flight attendant reminding you to put on your own oxygen mask before helping others. She says JPA has a specific goals and a methodology that's passed from administrators, to teachers and on to students. But Foley says there's no 'grading' of' teachers, or anything to make teachers feel like they're under the microscope in how they handle troubled kids.
Is it working? Foley says it is.
She points to surveys that show 88 percent of the teachers say their students show significantly statistical improvement in their ability to focus in class, interaction with teachers and interaction with peers.
Foley herself is relatively new to the CEO position, having joined JPA in the spring of 2015. She says she brought her business background to JPA and has helped tighten up the focus a bit.
The staff of 25 ("small, but growing,” she puts it) works with over a thousand kids and about a hundred teachers. But expansion is in the works, and JPA is working on a new campaign called "9th Gear".
“One of the most diffcult junctures in the education is pipeline is from 8th grade to 9th grade,” she says, and JPA hopes to catch vulnerable kids at that critical time, just before they enter high school.
Foley says what JPA offers is not a "safety net", but what she calls an "achievement net that catches children and allows them to bounce back and keep climbing."
She says she knows JPA can't perform miracles, but she points out that the one child JPA puts back on track in school, could be that one person who saves your life in the operating room, or the cop that protects you on the street.
I asked her how tough it is for a therapist to take on the case of an especially troubled child, never knowing for sure whether that child is destined for better days.
She holds up a large paperweight on her desk that simply says "Believe".
Foley says JPA plans to expand its reach to thousands more kids and hundreds of more teachers in the coming years.
And what would Jane Addams say about the Juvenile Protective Association today? Foley pauses.
"Do more."
"Good job so far, but do more."
Join us May 20, 2016 for JPA's Spring benefit:
Go for the Gold!
Featuring unique Olympic sports memorabilia.
Click here for details: jpachicago.org
JPA Family & Development Center
1707 N Halsted St
Chicago, IL 60614
Phone (312) 440-1203