Owen’s Story

Aim Higher opened the door, and Annunciation Catholic school, empowered by its small class sizes and expert educators, was able to catch a struggling student before he even had a chance to fall. 

Darcie Mullinax of Annunciation School describes her third grade student, Owen H: “Owen is constantly looking for information. He’s just like a sponge of knowledge and is very curious about lots of different topics. He is really fun to teach because anything that you give him, he just eats it up.”

Bright and inquisitive, Owen H. is, according to another Annunciation teacher, Anne Stickney, “just one of those kids everybody likes.”

Three years ago, the people who cared most deeply about Owen were afraid the child they treasured would be buried beneath the challenges he faced as a student. Owen spent his kindergarten year online because of the pandemic shutdowns, and upon returning to school for 1st grade, he experienced significant obstacles to his emotional, behavioral, and academic growth.

His mother says, “After the shutdown, Owen was experiencing significant anxiety and difficulty focusing in class, which he blamed on himself.” Owen has since been diagnosed with an auditory processing disorder coupled with anxiety. Unlike most families who endure much stress and frustration in the often long stretch of time between red flags and diagnoses, Owen’s parents saw Annunciation intervene immediately.

“His teacher stepped in and worked with him to find strategies to help him understand and manage his feelings, and to help him feel successful in class,” Owen’s mother says, “She saw his talents and gifts, and helped him with tools to manage his struggles, well before we were able to have a formal learning plan in place.”

Owen’s Catholic school, empowered by their small class sizes and expert educators, caught Owen before he even had a chance to fall. His 1st grade teacher, Beth Sable, recalls, “ Yeah. I think what Owen needed in that moment was not me to teach him how to hold his pencil and write consonant-vowel-consonant words. Owen needed something bigger. Thankfully we were in a place where we could partner with his family and partner with our counselors and utilize our sensory room and give Owen what he needed . . . sometimes the outside circumstances in a little six year old’s body are more important [than test scores].”

Owen was in the right place at the right time when his hardships began, and his parents credit the Aim Higher Foundation with making a Catholic school education accessible to their family: “Owen’s Aim Higher scholarship meant that he was in a school that was able to meet his needs and value him fully, even in exceptionally difficult circumstances. When we chose his school, we were impressed with the sense of community and caring, but we couldn’t have known how critical that would be in his story.”

The Aim Higher Foundation scholarship is truly critical for the families and children we serve. For Owen, the AHF scholarship meant he was in a place that would swiftly address a potential threat to the trajectory of his social, emotional, and educational success. With the help of Aim Higher, Owen did not slip through the cracks. Today, three years later, his teacher insists, “He lights up the room. He’s just a great kid.”