Karen Kong profile

Many people know who Karen Kong is, whether it’s from middle school sex ed, or from her being the coordinator of the YEP club. Most people have come across her at one point or another. But does anyone really know what her job actually is? Karen’s job title is Program Coordinator of Prevention, Intervention, and Adult Education.  When asked what she does for the job she replied, “Some of my major responsibilities include 6th, 7th, and 8th grade sex ed at all the schools and districts in Inyo County (including Death Valley); GED classes for adults in the community, inmates at the Inyo County Jail, and at the Cal Fire Firefighting Inmates Camp in Round Valley; Tobacco Use Prevention Education; Alcohol and Drug Prevention and Intervention classes; Senior Government Day organization; YEP Coordinator; and Inmate Panels for Freshman Health Classes. In addition, I have recently added Suicide Prevention Education for students and teachers, and I am available to help with any other prevention or intervention related issue at all school sites. I also participate in many policy making discussions with the Bishop Police Department, Inyo County Sheriff, Bishop City Council, and Inyo County Board of Supervisors.” We can see from this long list of answers that Karen has a lot of responsibilities that most of us didn’t have a clue about.

Karen has worked for the Inyo county superintendent of schools office for 6 years. Karen spent her early adulthood raising her children, so she started her career path later in life. When she decided she wanted to start working a job, she knew that she wanted to help people.

“I started as a reporter, then moved to a job at Wild Iris counseling and advocating for victims of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault,” Kong Said. ” I then got a job with Inyo County Health and Human Services working in Alcohol, Tobacco, and Drug Prevention.”

Through that job she discovered her love of educating teenagers. Karen was an initially shy person that was very hard on herself, but found it fun to teach people about things she was confident in.

“When the job opened at ICSOS, I thought that my skills being completely comfortable talking to anyone about virtually anything would fit well with the new sex ed portion of the job,” Kong Said. “Plus it allowed me to continue to help people, while having the most fun working most of the time with teenagers. Generally speaking, I want to influence the most amount of people I possibly can during my life in order to help them lead happy and healthy lives; to help them to take control of their futures, their decisions, and to be their most true selves.”

Along with the many other things Karen does, she also runs a program called ASPIRE(Assisting Student Parents In Reaching Excellence). She explained ASPIRE as “…a countywide one-on-one mentoring, support, and education program for pregnant and parenting teens. ASPIRE uses a mentoring based approach to keeping these students in school and helping to guide them through nine months of pregnancy and beyond. Our mission is to provide mentoring and targeting support services to pregnant and parenting teens in order to ensure successful completion of high school and transition to higher education or the work world.”

The goals of the ASPIRE program are: 1) to reduce the drop-out rate of pregnant and parenting teens in Inyo County; 2) keep pregnant and parenting teens in their high school of choice; 3) help them develop individual abilities in parenting and other necessary life skills; and 4) help them meet basic needs during pregnancy and beyond including transportation, health care, child care, nutritious food, and school tutoring.”

Many of you may have heard of the Youth Education Program, this also run by Karen. She thinks very highly of this program and states “Watching how they progress over their years in YEP it truly remarkable.” One of the main goals of YEP to to spread the word of drug prevention, when asked about her thoughts on the subject she replied, “As far a drug prevention as a whole, it is super important to me. Drugs and alcohol abuse is one of the worst issues facing our community and State and the only way to combat it is through direct education and changing the direction of the youth entering into the time in their life they might begin to use. With marijuana legal in California now, the message is even more important”

I think we can all learn a lot from Karen Kong, a hard working person that not only helps people in bad situations, but helps influence people to make the right ones. She stated “I guess I would like to say that I am no one special. That anyone who puts their mind to what they want, can achieve it. Hard work is important. But so is caring. I truly care about the futures of each and every student I teach. I want them to be the very best people they can be. I also want to do what I can to help them avoid some of the mistakes I made and that made my life more difficult that it needed to be. That sounds super corny and fake, but you all know me…I don’t lie.”

Tags: Karen Kong, YEP, ASPIRE, ICSOS, BUHS