If you step into Miss Julia Cogan’s classroom in the morning, you’ll notice something right away: the calm.
Before the day truly begins, she takes about 10 minutes to walk students through what’s ahead – what they’ll learn, what they’ll need, what will change, what won’t. It’s simple and practical, and it does something powerful: it helps kids settle. They know what’s coming. They know where materials are. They know what to do when a pencil breaks. And because of that, they can spend more energy on what matters… learning.
That steady rhythm says a lot about Miss Julia. She’s the kind of teacher who believes organization isn’t about control; it’s a form of care. And she’s the kind of person who believes faith isn’t something you schedule, it’s something you live.
Starting in 2020: A first year built on flexibility (and grit)
Julia Cogan arrived at Escuela de Guadalupe in fall 2020, an unforgettable year to begin teaching. COVID protocols changed constantly. Quarantines came in waves. Some students were in the classroom one day and learning remotely the next.
Julia remembers that year’s fifth grade class as especially impacted. They were so frequently quarantined that someone joked they spent more time out than the rest of the school combined. For a first-year teacher, it could have felt like an impossible situation.
Instead, Julia built what she could control: consistency, clarity, and a classroom culture grounded in dignity. Even in a year when the world felt unpredictable, her students could count on their routines, their expectations, and the quiet message that they were safe, known, and capable.
The ACE path that brought her to Denver
Julia came to Escuela through the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) program at the University of Notre Dame. It is a formation experience that places teachers in Catholic schools while they grow as educators and earn a graduate degree.
For Julia, ACE wasn’t simply a placement; it was a path into the kind of teaching she felt called to do. And Escuela’s dual-language, Catholic mission matched her own values in a rare, tangible way: bilingual education that honors students’ identities, paired with a faith-centered community that forms the whole child.
“Faith isn’t something that happens only during our 30 minutes of religion teaching,” she explains. “Faith is something that happens all throughout the day. We don’t put it in a box.”
From St. Louis to Notre Dame: A calling that took shape through service
Julia grew up in St. Louis in a Catholic family. Her faith wasn’t just tradition, it was formation: family, parish life, and the slow realization that faith is meant to shape the everyday.
As an undergraduate student at Notre Dame, Julia admits that teaching wasn’t something she thought about much. That clarity came through a volunteer experience that she started as a freshman.
She joined a volunteer program in which college students taught adults in the community who wanted to learn English. Julia went in thinking it would be helpful practice because she loved Spanish and had studied it in high school. What surprised her was how much she loved the teaching itself: building confidence, breaking language into steps, and watching someone realize, “I can do this.”
That volunteer work, which she ended up doing all four years of undergraduate school, planted a seed. Teaching wasn’t just a job; it felt like a way to serve.
A year in Santiago: Why Julia Cogan left and what she learned
After two years at Escuela, Julia did something that might seem counterintuitive for someone who had found a strong fit: she left.
Through her ACE network, Julia had the chance to teach in Santiago, Chile, at a school partnered with Notre Dame that was developing its own bilingual program. A mentor encouraged her to go, and Julia felt drawn to the opportunity, especially because the program was still early in its growth.
She wanted to learn from a different context. She wanted to see what bilingual education looked like elsewhere. She wanted to stretch.
Santiago delivered exactly that, and it also sharpened her understanding of what makes Escuela distinctive.
In Chile, Julia taught in a wealthy school where English was valued, but often not necessary outside the classroom. At Escuela, bilingualism isn’t enrichment, it’s daily life. Students need both languages across the whole day: in class, at recess, at lunch, and after school. They aren’t “trying out” bilingualism; they’re living it.
When Julia returned to Denver, she possessed newfound clarity: Escuela’s model is powerful precisely because it is rooted in real student need, and in deep respect for students’ home language and culture.
Why Escuela fits: Two values Julia refuses to separate
Julia often comes back to a simple truth: there are many Catholic schools, and there are many dual-language programs but Escuela’s combination of both is rare.
It’s also exactly what she wants.
She believes bilingualism is a gift and a bridge. She believes Catholic education is formation, not just instruction. At Escuela, those values don’t compete… they reinforce each other.
Julia’s faith shows up not as a separate subject but as a steady thread throughout the day: how students speak to one another, how they recover after conflict, how they learn to reframe hard moments.
One of her daily touchpoints is a short closing message that she changes year to year, always faith-based. This year, her fourth graders know it by heart: “God is good all the time. All the time, God is good.”
Julia uses it as perspective. On tough days when a student feels like they didn’t meet expectations, or when behavior didn’t match their best self, it becomes a reminder that God’s care doesn’t fluctuate with performance. Kids can try again tomorrow. They are still loved today.
The 4th/5th grade partnership
Julia Cogan and her Spanish-language partner, Miss Miriam, carry a shared responsibility for two grade levels, coordinating what students need, when they need it, and how to support them across languages. Julia laughs that the communication load was more than she expected. In many schools, teachers own a single grade or a single subject. At Escuela, effective teaching requires constant partnership.
That coordination is exactly why Julia’s structure matters so much. She follows research showing that well-established routines reduce anxiety and help students stay focused. When materials are predictable and procedures are clear, kids spend less time feeling uncertain and more time learning.
For example, Julia starts each day with a preview. Even when “every Tuesday is the same,” she still walks through it, because talking it through helps students feel calm and capable.
What she hopes students carry with them
Ask Julia Cogan what she hopes students leave with after two years in her classroom, and she doesn’t start with grades.
She starts with curiosity.
She wants students to wonder, to ask questions, to notice patterns, to see learning as something alive, not something they endure. She wants them to recognize that the world is meaningful, that it’s worth studying, and that God made it with beauty and purpose.
And she wants them to grow in perspective: to put bad days in context, to try again, to treat others with dignity, and to remember that, no matter what, they are loved.
