Alumni Spotlight: Joel Hudec (Child Development, '10)

The city of Beaumont, California, is the gateway to many iconic destinations. The community of about 50,000 residents straddles the mountain pass separating Greater Los Angeles from Joshua Tree National Park, Palm Springs and Coachella.

For San Diego State University alumnus Joel Hudec (child development, '10), however, Beaumont itself is the destination.

Hudec, who grew up in nearby Yucaipa, returned to his home community in 2018 to make a difference as an educational leader. He is now in his fourth year as principal of Brookside Elementary, where many children of his high school classmates currently attend.

A bit surreal, perhaps, but certainly rewarding.

“We were on the swim team together, or we were in ASB together and now they're bringing their kids here,” Hudec said. “To see that growth and connection, that part is super fun.”

Hudec’s leadership in Beaumont has garnered national attention.

Last fall, he was named recipient of the Milken Educator Award, an honor dubbed “The Oscars of Teaching” that recognizes the excellence of early-to-mid career education professionals. The award comes with a $25,000 prize as well as a trip to Washington, D.C., in June, where he will compare notes with other outstanding educators from around the country at the Milken Educator Awards Forum.

"I think any educator is going to have their down days, whether it’s an incident with a student or a staff member or just one of those tough days where you're working through interpersonal conflicts,” Hudec said. “I think that the award is honestly a boost of confidence. It makes me feel like, ‘Okay, we're on the right track in supporting students and educators.""

Building belonging

At Brookside, Hudec leads a school with 700 students, including his district’s Moderate to Severe Medically Fragile program, which supports children with complex conditions. Overall, he likens his responsibility to his students as being the bumpers on a bowling lane; His job is to gently guide students back on track before they fall into that metaphorical gutter.

“Kids are going to make mistakes and adults are going to make mistakes,” he said. “How do we push through and learn from that and become a better person tomorrow than we are today because of it?

"The biggest thing with kids is that they know that you're going to show up for them.”

Even without an elementary curriculum background, Hudec and his team at Brookside have implemented labs for both writing and mathematics to allow teachers to track students progress across the grade levels and support teachers' understanding of how the standards build year over year. They also introduced the Ron Clark Academy House System, assigning students to one of four different houses (think Hogwarts in “Harry Potter”), each with their own custom shirts and a duly elected House Hero.

“We are often considered the district's overflow school. We want to make sure that when students come to Brookside, they have an automatic connection to the campus,” he explains. “It’s so no kid feels like they are alone — they have an automatic group of peers and staff to work with and build culture with."

Hudec has also worked hard to extend that culture to his team, implementing a staff house hero to highlight the hardworking staff members and implementing a mechanism for weekly recognition.

"What I'm really interested in right now is morale,” he said. “I want to go to the Milken Forum and talk to other leaders about how their schools are supporting that. Educators need to be taken care of so that the students are taken care of."

Discovering his passion

Hudec first fell in love with education as an undergraduate student at SDSU. He changed his major a lot early on, trying to find something he felt passionate about. He ended up in a course where he was assigned to mentor a young student with developmental disabilities.

“I remember thinking, ‘Okay, this is what I want to do,’” he recalls.

That led him to child development — a background that he said serves him well at his school site.

“The CFD program was great because it turned what I learned in books into real-life skills,” Hudec said. “While interning at the SDSU Children's Center, I worked with mentors who showed me how to use my school lessons in a real classroom. 

“Now that I’m working at an elementary school with students in TK through 5th grade, everything has come full circle. I use the lessons and hands-on experience I gained every single day to be a better educator.”