I am thinking a lot, of late, about inspiring a narrative pedagogy of hope (LeMay, 2014) as a way of promoting the learning of personally relevant strategies to enhance future and present wellbeing in school settings.
The notion of a narrative pedagogy of hope unfolded as two teachers and I co-composed narrative accounts of their experiences of making hope visible and accessible in their interactions with a set of hope-focused practices from the Nurturing Hopeful Souls (LeMay, Edey, Larsen, 2008) resource.
As a way of beginning to make sense of the role of an educator inspiring a narrative pedagogy of hope, I found my most recent student list of characteristics of 'hopeful teachers'. The list was created by students who, very early in their study of hope and hoping, were also inquiring into the characteristics of hopeful places and spaces as part of a hope-focused service-learning project (Hope Kids™).
The characteristics of hopeful teachers, in their opinion:
are positive
are optimistic and pessimistic simultaneously
are happier
can see beyond the issues
are not superficial
are open-minded
don't scratch the surface
are imaginative
are futuristic
As I reflect on this list of characteristics, Havel's (1990) definition of hope as 'not having to have things turn out, but being okay with how things turn out' comes to mind.
Using this list and Havel's definition, I am off to ponder more about what I've learned from conversations with teachers and school staff who, like me, are increasingly inspired to support students' ways of hoping, personally and socially in different spaces and places over time when they also, make hope visible and accessible in their interactions.
I am off to ponder these learnings because my own stories of experience tell me that in addition to the above list, there is more for us to learn about how we inspire hopeful ways of relating, feeling, acting and thinking as beacons of hope on the school landscape.
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