Good Read

I am off to the library to get my copy of one of the new additions in the Hope-Lit Data Base that caught my attention. I need to get it from the library because it does not have the HF label attached to the title. Anything in the hope-lit data base with HF means it is available in the Jack Chesney resource centre at the Hope Foundation (11032-89 Ave., Edmonton, Alberta). Please - do not put a hold on it till January 5, 2010 because I hope to have it till then.

Holleran, K. E. (2009). Meaningful matters: An autoethnography of hope for academically gifted high school achievers. Dissertation Abstracts International Section A: Humanities and Social Sciences, 70(1-A).

Abstract: Written as an autoethnography, this study explores the experience of six academically achieving gifted high school students alongside my experiences as a school counsellor working with gifted academic achievers in the Province of New Brunswick. Recent research in the area of gifted students suggests that high achieving students are at least as well adjusted as any other student in life; however, research also suggests that gifted students have a distinct set of qualities that may complicate their ability to set goals and to remain resilient against adversities. Research in the area of hope suggests that students with higher levels of hope indicate more satisfactory levels of academic achievement and greater competence in interpersonal relations than compared to students with lower levels of hope. Although hope has been studied in educational settings, researchers have not examined hope and how hope may be maintained with achieving gifted students who face the inevitable challenges that

competition and high achievement in school impose on a regular basis. Interactive interviews, stematic self-introspection, and retrospective observations were used to collect data detailing accounts concerning how academically achieving gifted individuals described their educational encounters and their experiences of hope on the educational landscape. Reflections from the participants are laid alongside my own accounts of hope and giftedness in high school education. Descriptions are presented as interwoven narratives and include my current thoughts as a researcher, my past experiences and observations as a school counsellor, and my understandings of the participants' stories. Several key ideas emerged from the collection of data. Hope for these six gifted academically achieving students was described as a dynamic and energetic sense of confidence about their own futures. Early high school years (grades nine and ten) often served as a meaningless period in their educational careers that stifled their hopes. Enriched classes and independent studies in later years (grades eleven and twelve) offered students hope in their learning, because the independent learning style often focused on application and exploration of knowledge which made the learning process more meaningful. Further, these academically achieving students often felt as though their hope was challenged as they struggled to belong and fit-in with their peers, evaluated their performance against their peers on a regular basis, and attempted to manage the pressures from teachers, parents, and themselves. These struggles often led the students to believe that their marks defined them, restricted what was possible, caused the students to dissociate from the learning process, and overshadowed meaning and hope within the classrooms. Possible implications for teachers, parents, school counsellors, and academically achieving gifted students are offered and implications for further research are suggested.

 

Life Changing Moments

This morning one of the amazing teachers with whom I am interacting in the Hope-focused Service-learning program had this to say:

"I want this class to be one of those life changing moments in the students' lives. I want students to look back on this class as a memorable event in their schooling. I want it to be a time for the students to make personal shifts in who they can become."

I left our conversation wondering what learning would look, sound and feel like if these statements became the educational outcomes we focused on achieving in the 21st Century. 

Hope Tool # One

So here's the thing. I need to create a new hope kit to help me on my next leg of my journey. As many of you know, I am working to understand why we need to make hope visible in the lives of students in the classroom as part of my doctorate. Since I am in my first year of the doctorate program, I have not started my research per se. However, I have been doing lots of writing, conversing and story telling, which has led me to realize that I need new hope tools. 

The first hope tool that I am going to add to my hope kit* (I have made two in the last nine years) is the following question from Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of Hope: Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed:

"What can we do now in order to be able to do tomorrow what we are unable to do today?"

* For more information on Hope Kits check out the  Nurturing Hopeful Souls resource available at www.ualberta.ca/hope under the 'Good Reads' Section.

Obama Peace Prize

I for one, am not surprised President Obama won the Nobel Peace prize. 

I say this because I remember how many refugee and immigrant students in a grade five class last spring named him as their hope symbol. When queried these students said it was because he gave them hope that people could work together to make a better world, that he would bring people together to make the world a more peaceful place. 

I believe his action has been to engage people in imagining what is possible. I have no doubt that his daily actions are already inspiring many to do what they can to build a more equitable, self-sustaining planet.  Further, the fact that the Nobel Peace Prize committee recognized that he is bringing hope to the world demonstrates that Obama is helping us to see another way to be with each other.

Building Community Capacity One Story at a Time

Last night as I shared the following story with my husband, I realized I should be telling you too. So here goes....

Since I am FINALLY ready to get back into the routine with the small but mighty group of Hope Kids that I worked with last year, I gave each of them a call last night. The first young lady shouted YIPEE when I told her I would be out Wednesday at lunch to start planning Hope-Focused Community Service projects with her and her group. I thought that was pretty cool.

However, it was during my conversation with the fourth Hope Kid that I nearly fell off my chair.

She calmly informed me that the girls had been meeting on our regular weekday since the beginning of the school year. When I asked what they have been doing, she said, "Well we've been brainstorming ideas for projects and how to get started." Her comment reminded me what they told me last year toward the end of our time together. That was that they were committed to our work together because they were in charge of the hope-focused projects ~ most importantly that their voice counted. Since one of the essential elements of the HOPE KIDS programs (Hope-focused Service-learning and Hope-Focused Community Service) is student voice, I was pretty pleased.

I am, as you can tell ecstatic, to know that so much more happens when we enable children and youth to be more in charge of their learning. I am learning so much from these amazing young ladies. I am sure I will have much more to share with you in the very near future.

In the meantime, I would like to thank the St. Albert Rotary Club, The St. Albert Gazette, St. Albert Family and Community Social Services, TD Trust and the Million Dollar Round Table for their past support in making this particular HOPE KIDS program a reality.

Humming Bird's Wings of Flight

Last night I experienced what I might call my first anxiety attack about my decision to return to school this fall to embark on obtaining another degree. 

Here's what I learned when I quieted myself enough to connect to what I am feeling as September looms:

 

As the panic dances on the tip of each nerve

I feel a zillion laser beams shooting outward to the very outer edge of my being.

Each as tight as a violin string vibrating like a humming bird's wings.

If one breaks the music will stop.

And so, I know, I must allow the silent tension to pull me forward ~ 

Hope and Being at Peace

I am thinking of late about different hope definitions in relation to my own actions, thoughts, feelings, and relationships. In particular, I am thinking about how hope guides my thoughts, actions, feelings, and relationships as I move forward in time. 

First, let me share with you the three hope definitions that I rely on.

Stephenson (1991) defines hope as “a process of anticipation that involves the interaction of thinking, acting, feeling, relating, and is directed toward a future fulfillment that is personally meaningful".

 Dufault and Martocchio (1985) describe hope as “a multidimensional dynamic life force characterized by a confident yet uncertain expectation of achieving a future good which, to the hoping person, is realistically possible and personally significant".

Jevne (1994) describes hope as enabling individuals to envision a future they are willing to participate. I like to add 'envision and work toward' a future in which they can participate with interest.

In each of these definitions there is a sense of moving toward a desired or good future as determined by the individual. In preparation for a paper that I am working on, I have been reading how different philosophers, beginning with Aristotle, describe this movement toward what is determined to be good. 

So this morning, I asked myself, 'How do I determine what is good for me?' Of course I believe how I determine what is good for me has been and is learned from my experiences along the way. So I expect that this whole posting might be different if I wrote it yesterday or tomorrow. Having said that, I came up with the following - "BEING AT PEACE" with who I am and becoming (Greene, 1995) is critical to my hope (and hopeful self). When I am not feeling at peace with what has happened in the past, present or what I envision might happen in the future as a result of my past or present, then I do not feel hopeful. Having just discovered this about myself, I believe that what happens then is that I search for thoughts, actions, and relationships that help me feel more at peace and as a result more hopeful.

Thinking about this as I post this blog, I would add that, Mahatma Ghandi's quote:

Whenever you are in doubt, apply the following test: recall the face of the poorest and weakest person you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to them.

is of late has been a huge determining factor in whether or not I feel at peace/hopeful.

HOPE KIDS NAIT Summer Camp

Here's what I've been up to since my last posting....

http://www.inews880.com/Channels/Reg/LocalNews/Story.aspx?ID=1115430

Hope Stories

Here's something you might like to see. Grade nine students at McCauley School have the texts of their digital stories published in the local paper. Check them out at:

edmontonexaminer.com/Community/Articles.aspx?id=3150&catname=hope+at+McCauley+school

Telling Our Stories

Last Thursday I heard a high school student tell a group of adults around a table discussion that one of the barriers she feels to attending school is that there are few opportunities to tell her story. What she would like others to know is how difficult it is to ask her grandmother for bus money. She is afraid to hear what she knows in her heart. If she gave up on her dream of becoming a welder there would be less stress on her grandmother and family. However, giving up is not an option for this determined young lady who asked us to consider the consequences. As a hopeful person, she want others to HEAR her story so that she can continue to imagine and work toward the day when she can pay for her own bus pass. For "when we hope we detach ourselves from the story of our lives up to now. . . .The hopeful person is on the boundary between old formulations of the self and new formulations not yet born (Barnard, 1995, p. 50).

I believe we have a responsibility to find a way to do what the adults at Eastglen High School did for this young lady. They created a space for her to courageously put her hope of becoming a welder for others to hear even though she prefaced it with, "You might thing this is crazy, but I love helping my grandfather weld and so..."

I left the table asking myself what is the smallest thing I can do to support her hope? Perhaps allowing her story to become part of my story is a start to knowing what I need to do next!

While Hoping for a Cure

Below are some of the hopes that participants at a "Diabetic Peer Support Hope Retreat" named after participating in hope activities. I wanted to share them with you because on the first night together the theme centered around hopes for a cure. By the third day together, the participants' hopes had shifted and that elevated my hope. When I saw them at a follow-up session, three weeks later, the first thing I heard one participant say to another was, "Do you want to walk with me three times a week at the mall?" Another participant shared what he has been collecting in his hope bag since we last met. 

- I hope I will be more knowledgeable for tomorrow.

- I hope we'll understand each other better.

- I hope I can keep my eyesight.

- I hope we can help the Youth Diabetic Prevention Project.

- I hope I can control my cholesterol and blood pressure in choosing foods more closely in my diet.

- I hope I can understand more about diabetes and hope that someday there will be a cure.

- I hope I will live better.

- I hope I am becoming a healthy person to help others.

- I hope I can control my blood sugar level by exercising and sticking to healthy foods.

- I hope I will feel better about myself.

- I hope I exercise three times this week.

- I hope I will see some changes in the near future.

- I hope I can learn more about diabetes and practice caution.

Hope Notes

I found this quote while reading about the importance of stories as a way to find meaning in our lives ~ 

"Hope is born while facing the unknown and discovering that one is not alone."

Need I say more?

(Austin MacCurtain, in a review of John Updike's Self-Consciousness that appeared in The [London] Times Literary Supplement,as quoted by Martin Marty in Context 21:15 (15 August 1989), p. 3.

Hopeful Perspectives & Generalized Hope

Well I have waited long enough.

I was hoping that by not responding to the query two blogs ago, that others might put forth their ideas. Since that has not happened YET, I will tell you that, "Yes, I believe hope is a perspective that helps us see or find opportunities." Having said that, I also believe that at times it is difficult to maintain a hopeful perspective, which is why we need to surround ourselves with 'hope coaches'. It is also why I believe we need to find ways to uncover and access our hoping selves and the hoping selves of others. It is why I was so determined to publish a resource that contained ways to access our hoping selves.

I think Dufault and Martocchio (1985) would agree. They did a study with 35 elderly cancer patients and found there are two spheres and six dimensions of hope. I believe the spheres contribute to what I mean when I say when we look through a hopeful lens our thinking, actions, feelings, and relationships helps us envision and move toward a future in which we can participate with enthusiasm and interest.

The two spheres of hope are particularized and generalized. Particular hopes focus on specifics, often in the moment. Particular hopes might be: I hope I don't freeze on the way into work today; I hope I can write another section for my paper before I have to leave my desk this morning; I hope no one bullies me today. Generalized hope, on the other hand, provides an overall sense of hope that things will turn out okay, a sense of well-being and security that one will cope with whatever comes along. It is a feeling or sense that one can develop and work toward particular hopes.

On the flip side, if we have experienced many hope suckers in our past or do not feel very hopeful, our generalized hope would look, feel and sound quite different. Let's use the particular example of the particular hope "I hope I am not bullied today." This might be the statement of someone who is using a 'less than' hopeful perspective or whose generalized feeling of his or her ability to be or not be bullied is not very hopeful. Feeling that one has strategies to cope with the bullies of the world helps me feel that when I meet one that things will turn out okay because I will be able to stand up to the bully or at least have supports in place so that I am not harmed by the bully's actions or that I can access the support I need it so that I do not continue to be harmed.

So now what do you think?

As you might know, I am curious about how hope influences our actions, thoughts, feelings and relationships. I am also curious about what others think, feel and believe about hope and hoping. So I quickly posted the comment from my last posting in the hopes that it would engage others. I also had to think about the query as I celebrated 'Family Day Weekend' with my family at the lake. However, as I feared, I am not technologically competent enough to know how to moderate comments on my blog. With that in mind, I decided I would do what I can do at the moment. I will respond in a new posting.

I can tell you that I often hear adults say that 'things look, feel, and sound different' after they spend time making hope visible and accessible in the various hope-focused workshops that I have participated in. Teachers tell me that their relationships with their students shift the day after they have completed an activity from Nurturing Hopeful Soulsresource. I plan to ask teachers how their relationships look, feel and sound different after they begin making hope visible and accessible in their interactions with students. In the meantime, I look forward to hearing what others think, feel and believe. I also look forward to learning how to moderate my blog.

Intentionally Paying Attention

Children and youth repeatedly tell me that they turn to hopeful people when they feel the hope suckers settling in. The hope suckers that visited me this morning were voices from my past reminding me how I struggle with writing. Instead of letting my 'fearful self' take over my thinking, feeling, acting and thus my ability to connect with myself through writing, I intentionally turned to Wendy's blog at www.thehopelady.blogspot.com.

As I read Wendy's latest post, my ears let go of my shoulders, my lungs expanded, I picked up my pen and started to write what I needed to know.

Our mission at the Hope Foundation is to study how intentionally using hope enhances quality of life. I believe that seeking out or thinking about what a hopeful person would do is an intentional act that distinguishes hope from wishing. Hope researchers, Farran, Herth,and Popovich (1995) state that wishing is the precursor to hope. I agree. Wishing might be construed as an intentional act that enables one to envision and work toward a future that one can participate. In other words, I needed to do more than wish that the words would flow through my fingers. There are those of you who might say that I could have picked up my pen and started writing. However, past experience has taught me that that does not work for me so I did what does work. Paying attention to thoughts, feelings, actions, and relationships that enhance our hoping selves is one of five hope practices that are outlined in our most recent resource, Nurturing Hopeful Souls: Practices and Activities for Working with Children and Youth available at www.ualberta.ca/hope.

Hopeful Places

I have the good fortune to be working alongside grade seven and nine students in the Hope-Focused Service-Learning program. Today we wrote about 'hopeful places' in the grade nine classroom. This is not as easy as it sounds. I was proud of how the students worked hard to generate a list of words to describe how hope feels when we are in these places. There were a couple of students who had difficulty thinking of a 'hopeful place' - past or present in their school or community. I wonder if they will remember a place when their classmates share stories of their experiences in these places next week.

In the grade seven classroom we created collages of 'hopeful places' in groups. And then using the collages, filled in a T chart to describe what hope looks, sounds, and feels like. We also brainstormed 'hopeful places' and how the places are hopeful in the community surrounding the school. As I said, we worked in groups in the grade seven class and so we were able to talk about the skills we were developing as 'team' members. We discussed how group skills will help us when we go out into the community to bring hope to others. As we encounter the challenges that go with an inquiry project it will help to know how to contribute to the team.

I leave you with a poem that one of the grade nine students gave me to share with you about what she is learning about hope.

Hope is...

Laughter, tears, and strength.
It's the weakness facing it's opponent to prove
the power and will be become stronger.
It's clarity developed from the frustrations
and confusions of our lives.
It's that feeling of accomplishment, of victory
after experiencing the 'battle of anger, sorrow and loss'.
It's the comfort and love of our family and friends, ~
the trust, loyalty, honesty, bravery, faith.
It's the never ending story of the world's diversity, completely
different and unique and one.

Lessons From Grade Five Students

Today I met a group of grade five students who were introduced to the Hope-Focused Service-Learning program for the first time. Since we are in phase one of the program we talked about what researchers do. The teacher and I do this to frame our work together at the beginning of the program as a quest to awaken new understandings. We had not yet talked about our hope study. I finished reading The Three Questions by Jon J. Muth as I often do when starting this work with a new group. When I asked if anyone had a comment, wonder or a-ha they would like to share after hearing the story of The Three Questions, a hand shot up in the air. "How can you study hope when it is unique to each person?" I want to say that I handled the question well, but the truth is that I did not. The question, as I acknowledged, was an excellent question. What I did not say was that it was one of the questions that drives much of our work at the Hope Foundation of Alberta. We know that there is more than one way to search for the many wonders that we have about the multi-dimensional nature of hope. My own research interests are to use narrative inquiry or the telling of stories to uncover and discover how hope guides our actions, thoughts, feelings and relationships in the Hope-Focused Service-Learning program. I did not say all this because I was too astounded to respond with any clarity. I think I said something like, "That is what we will be discovering over the year."

After the students created representations of symbols that came to mind when they thought of hope and had a chance to "think about their thinking", the student raised his hand again to ask if the downturn in the economy is affecting the study of hope or hopes of individuals. We added that one to our list of questions. Later when the class was getting ready to go home, the student informed me that he had another two questions for me to write down. "How did I decide to study stuff? Why did I decide to study hope?" These are stories that I can tell next time. In the meantime, I will repeat what I often tell children and youth. That is, "We should have engaged them in conversations about hope a long time ago!