Way back on January 1 of this year, I wrote about how hard it is to find a hopeful news story. Since that time I have been a little preoccupied with the number of schools who are interested in working with hope and have missed many opportunities to share what I have noticed since. So when my husband passed a page from the Edmonton Journal to me this morning, like he does whenever he sees something that will elevate my hope, I decided it was time to address the letters to the editor under the heading "Growing up on 'rez' what you make of it' in today's Edmonton Journal!! Students from Ermineskin in Hobemma wrote in response to "Ermineskin students find oasis of calm in a story place: School's steady, relentless approach held as a model for First Nations," The Journal Sept 20.
The letters written by 13, 14, and 15 year old students and especially Teisha's comment, "Just remember, it's not the place, it's the people," remind me of how I felt when students from Montana shared their artistic representations of hope with us at the Hope Foundation some three years ago. I remember leaving that conversation wondering how we could, as a community, work to magnify the hope that they depicted alongside the hopelessness that we so often focus our attention toward.
The letters in today's Edmonton Journal, represent, in my opinion, an example of how applied hope, or in this case, 'paying attention to hope', which is one of five hope-focused practices in the Nurturing Hopeful Souls resource, enhances quality of life for both the students, community members and those who live outside the community. I believe the letters ask us to consider what and who nurtures the hope(s) of ALL students and how we might contribute to their hopes from the perspective of what is meaningful to them.
