Educator interview How do you teach students hope Cathleen Beachboard
The throughline of
the Talk or idea
is that using hope in the classroom,
the science of hope,
can change the world and help kids
persevere, grow, and thrive
in any environment, as long as they have
hope to look forward to.
The whole reason that I got into
studying hope theory
was because I adopted five children
and– I know, all at once!
My kids, they went through
a horrible situation
that was full of abuse and neglect.
So they’ve lived trauma, and I wanted
to know how I could help them.
So because of that, I started researching
what helps someone persevere
even through the darkness,
and I discovered that
there was a whole bunch of research
on hope, the science of hope,
and hope psychology.
For example, there was a professor,
Charles Snyder,
who is one of the founders of hope’s
theory and he showed that with hope,
students who went through a whole bunch
of trauma and experiences
could persevere and not only persevere
but thrive,
based off of having something to look
forward to.
A hope score.
There are a few tests and these
are available free online,
you can Google search them, they
exist on a spectrum
and it’s a simple test, so with the child
one it’s a few questions
and they rank the questions like,
you know,
“Do I feel like I can control my
environment?” and they say, you know,
“One, two, three,” and the higher their
score indicates the more hope they have
in that current moment.
It doesn’t mean, “Oh I have this level of
hope for forever,”
but a more hopeful child,
according to research,
one, is going to attain more academically,
is going to end up with higher grades,
is going to feel more of a purpose
and drive to succeed,
and they’re going to have more
motivation to accomplish their goals,
even when it gets difficult.
Right now, in Covid-19, there are a lot of
students who are not engaged,
who are essentially checked out.
Why are they checked out?
Well, there are multiple reasons:
the trauma
and everything else in the world’s
going on, sometimes it’s too much.
They need something
to keep them going.
Hope breeds resiliency.
If we want our kids to engage,
we want them to thrive,
we want them to push past us, we want
them to see tomorrow as a bright light
that can guide them, that it’s not the
darkness of what we’re in right now.
There’s light through it.
We have to give them hope.
And it’s not, “Oh – you don’t have to
change your curriculum as an educator
to do this.”
These are simple practices from giving
choices on a project,
to giving students input in your
classroom rules and community,
to doing project-based learning.
All of that provides a student the
opportunity
to see that they control the world, and
it’s not the other way around.
These simple practices that you just do
every day
can change a child and give them
enough will and motivation
to not only bounce back from everything,
but to thrive.
Using mastery, autonomy, and purpose
in the classroom
is critical for improving
hope scores.
Now as a teacher, what kind of
pedagogical practices can I use?
Service learning is one of those because
it gives a child to look at a problem,
set a goal, find a way to get there, a
pathway, and work on doing it.
And as they do it, they realize,
“Woah, I have control in the world.
I’m not at the mercy of everything.
I can change the world around me
and not only that, I can affect it in
positive ways.”
That boosts their overall “waypower,”
the way to get there,
they’re figuring out a pathway,
and their willpower to get there.
Plus it gives them
a chance to meet those goals,
so it gives them purpose.
With mastery, autonomy, and purpose,
working for that hope score through
project-based learning, service learning,
giving them choices – simple as giving
a choice board in a classroom –
that’s going to boost a child’s hope
because you’re giving them a sense
that they, that child, has the power to
change the world around them.
We don’t give kids enough
voice in the classroom.
They need voice and choice in the
classroom because it gives them hope
that they one day can go out
and change the world.