One Uvalde School Serves as ‘A Beacon of Hope’

For Fulbright ExchangeAlumni and School Principal Joseph Olan, service has always been at the core of his work. When a mass shooting took place at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas in May 2022, it wasn’t a question about whether Joseph’s school would offer support; it was only a question of how.

As the town of Uvalde coped with the loss of 21 community members, including 19 children and two teachers, Sacred Heart Catholic School sprung into action. In just a matter of weeks, Joseph and his team have welcomed more than 70 new students, many of whom came from Robb Elementary​.

Over $1.5 million in contributions were transformed into tuition aid for families. The school also installed security improvements, including ballistic grade doors and windows, eight-foot tall steel fencing, and enhanced entrance security systems, in the hope of alleviating fears and anxiety in the community and preventing a future tragedy.

Moreover, to support the incoming students who were coping with feelings of grief, anger, and anxiety, Joseph’s school turned classrooms into counseling rooms, implemented social and emotional training for staff and teachers, started “Wellness Wednesdays,” and brought in emotional support dogs to provide comfort.

Joseph’s commitment to serving his students aligns with a broader teaching style, which centers around emotional and social development. Joseph wants to refresh the way children learn in the classroom, drawing on a more soft skills-based approach that builds on core curricula to strengthen the confidence of his students.

His outlook on teaching was inspired by his time in the Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching Research Program in Singapore in 2015, where he saw first-hand the impact of a curriculum based on social and emotional development skills-based learning. As he witnessed the success of this teaching style, Joseph realized this was a piece that was missing in the educational system in the U.S., and he saw a critical gap to fill.

As he’s worked to incorporate emotional learning into his own school’s curriculum, Joseph has found leveraging the social and relational skills of children, and focusing on teamwork, creativity, and problem-solving, can help to increase academic success – leading to an increase in students’ grade point averages and test scores.

As Joseph continued to see the practical merits of this approach, the recent tragedy in Uvalde put this teaching style into a whole new light.

“This tragedy really opened my eyes,” Joseph says.

Joseph hopes to involve parents too, and he offers a strategy framework for parents to support their kids at home. He lists these out in the “10 Best Ways to Support Your Children.” One of these strategies is called reciprocal determinism, which looks at how stimuli in one’s environment can influence the way one treats others.

Joseph ultimately wants to serve as a model for other schools, and he hopes that teachers around the country can learn from and lean into a similar kind of approach.

“When it comes to teaching, we have to get away from competitiveness,” he says. “We’re all one, and when it comes to children, it’s about helping and about sharing.”

While the town of Uvalde adjusts to a “new normal” in its community, Joseph’s commitment to building the confidence and resilience of the town’s youngest members has earned his school the title, “Beacon of Hope.”