Lasallian Tradition

Bishop Kelley is a comprehensive secondary school with a curriculum that is primarily college preparatory. More than 35 middle schools send students to Bishop Kelley. The course offerings reflect the needs of a diverse student body in terms of both ability and interest levels.

Bishop Kelley serves Catholic and non-Catholic families in Tulsa and the surrounding communities who seek a college-preparatory program within a Christian environment of concern, trust and growth. Consistently, more than 30 percent of the entering freshman students are non-Catholics.

For more than 50 years, Bishop Kelley High School has provided exceptional education to a vibrant and diverse community of students. As educators, we continually strive to prepare our young men and women for college and for life. Bishop Kelley students have long made positive contributions to the Tulsa community and state of Oklahoma through various Christian Service initiatives and ultimately as productive members of society.

St. John Baptist de La Salle, founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, was born in Rheims, France, in 1651. De La Salle was a man of faith and a man of zeal. He was sensitive to God’s presence in his life, eager and open to God’s will. The Word of God in scripture nourished his faith and directed his zeal to the service of the poor. In 1680 he founded the Christian Brothers to fulfill his dream of making a Christian education available to poor children.

De La Salle was an innovator in education. He affected the substitution of the simultaneous method of teaching for individual instruction. De La Salle replaced Latin with French—the mother tongue—as the language of learning and introduced writing to the curriculum of his schools because he realized that the underprivileged students of his day needed a basic education, rather than the classical education of the wealthy. The Brothers’ schools were so successful that De La Salle had many requests to start schools in rural areas. To this end, he founded colleges for the training of rural schoolmasters. He wrote books on pedagogy, including "The Conduct of Schools," which is still highly regarded for its educational precepts and psychology.

To fulfill his dream, John Baptist de La Salle paid a price. At the time of his death in 1719, he stated to his first Brothers that had he known all that would be asked of him to make his dream come true, he might not have had the courage to begin. Yet his dream lives on in the many Christian Brothers and teachers who continue to offer a Christian education to young men and women in the Lasallian spirit.

John Baptist de La Salle was canonized by the Roman Catholic Church in 1900. In 1950, Pope Pius XII proclaimed De La Salle “Patron Saint of All Teachers” because of the unique role he played in the Church’s mission of education of youth. In 1967, Pope Paul VI recognized the work of the Christian Brothers in the Church by the canonization of yet another Brother of the Christian Schools, Saint Benilde.