Helping Students Find the Confidence to Advocate

Helping Students Find the Confidence to Advocate: SHC’s Academic Resource Program 
By Simone Cohen ‘27

At the start of the 2025-2026 academic year, Sacred Heart Cathedral’s Academic Resource Program proudly opened its doors, creating a myriad of buzz and even larger impact in one semester alone. I had the pleasure of interviewing Academic Resource Program Director Ms. Karen Olson and Learning Specialist Ms. Karla Ambriz on their time here and their vision for the years to come here at what Ms. Olson describes as an “amazing community.” She expressed that they’re so “thankful that administrators, teachers and the community had a vision of this being a priority, so that this finally launched”. Ms. Ambriz couldn’t stress enough the already well-established foundation of “office hours as the backbone to academics here” and its effects on students’ ability to “already advocate for themselves”, unlike other school ecosystems where she thinks she would need to constantly be “working on that agency” and overall facilitating the development of self-confidence in students. Ms. Ambriz mentioned the vast disparities between the “stigma” around accessible education when she was in high school back in Los Angeles; in her perspective,  SHC  teachers’ present “place of curiosity”  as opposed to the normative possessiveness of being in “my classroom, and having my rules” builds a much quicker and deeper connection between faculty, students and everyone in between. She loves how this healthy “collaboration with teachers” has helped the program “progress”  from zero to its current size, “of around 250 students”, and will continue to do so over the near and distant future.

Ms. Olson, who’s been working in special education for over two decades, said, “ learning challenges aren’t compartmentalized: they’re everywhere.” So, having teachers “support one struggling student actually supports your entire classroom, and it supports your entire curriculum”. She brought up how “her high school felt very transactional”, whereas SHC, being “a Lasallian Vincentian school, puts connection and relationships” at the forefront of their mission. By “putting students first”, they also integrate academics with many other facets of their identity; for example, the infusion of “student-athletes”, “student club moderators”, and other non-academic roles at the school metamorphose learning from being something like a transaction to something so much more meaningful and akin to a tight-knit family. In today’s world, “the stress and the pressure of needing to push maybe beyond your limit” in school, especially towards being accepted into selective colleges like the University of California schools, has vastly increased the need for educational flexibility in the classroom. Ms. Olson highlighted that teachers have to find multiple “physical touch points” with students so that they can build “more partnerships” with members of their microsystem; for example, helping “ all the athletic teams, and coaches understand” the integral role that academic acceptance and growth play in a student’s overall psyche.

One of the best parts of their time here has been that “students knew what they needed,” says Ms. Olson. She felt over the moon when she had to pull a student from class, and while she tried to do it incognito, multiple students shot up and asked, “Are you here for me?” It astounded her that they “ were voluntarily announcing a part of their identity to their classmates.” That enthusiasm around meeting and collaborating with her and Ms. Ambriz was what Ms. Olson describes as an “ explosion of student awareness.” Ms. Ambriz echoed her excitement in students’ newfound autonomy. She has loved seeing students take what they learned from here and do outside in their own communities, like by tutoring at their local library or simply sitting down to help others, when previously they wouldn’t have held the confidence to do so. In the long-term, Ms. Olson would love to “expand our staff and expand our ability to help kids really solidify their own plan for learning success earlier,” and Ms. Ambriz wants to continue on reinforcing SHC’s ability to have “self-advocating” students.

The Academic Resource Program has been an incredible addition to the SHC community, etching itself into the legacy of the school in one semester alone by helping parents, educators and students find their footing in their educational journey. Ms. Ambriz summed it up perfectly, saying that the best part of this whole journey has been, and will continue to simply be about, “building connections”: the very thing that draws hundreds of students, myself included, into the school from the second they step onto campus.