Teaching for Hope
Teaching in ways that make students excited about material and hopeful for the future go hand-in-hand and are crucial for fostering student success in and beyond the classroom. Making subject matter relatable to students and what they are genuinely passionate about is a great way to generate interest in classroom activities and, in ELA especially, making assignments about their interests is a great way to create hope about them.
Students should be given as many opportunities to write about authentic topics as possible. If a student loves cars or interior design, for example, let them run with that. Create assignments that assess them on their ability to write about something they are excited to learn, obtain, or experience. Create positive associations between writing and their dreams. This will encourage them to write better and more often, so that they can continue to develop and reconceptualize their desires in life.
In the process of sharpening their focus on what they want to achieve, they will build valuable critical thinking skills and create better school work in the process. The combination of these reciprocating and interrelated effects will make your students generally happier, and optimism creates a snowball effect in which it generates more excitement about what they are able to accomplish and grows simultaneously.
It also keeps their minds open. This is crucial for their positive and productive consideration of obstacles and opportunities alike and, of course, effective or creative methodologies for going about completing assignments in class. And while we love when our students are writing better essays and responding more enthusiastically to discussions about various texts, our real job as teachers is to provide students with the tools to give themselves the best lives possible. This is entirely dependent on their interests and desires. By allowing them to write and reflect upon them, they become more hopeful about them and more determined to achieve them. While their hope is in a wide variety of things, the result of this is often a more defined plan for how they will attain their goals, the will to see this plan through, and - a bonus for teachers - more engagement in the classroom.
Students should be given as many opportunities to write about authentic topics as possible. If a student loves cars or interior design, for example, let them run with that. Create assignments that assess them on their ability to write about something they are excited to learn, obtain, or experience. Create positive associations between writing and their dreams. This will encourage them to write better and more often, so that they can continue to develop and reconceptualize their desires in life.
In the process of sharpening their focus on what they want to achieve, they will build valuable critical thinking skills and create better school work in the process. The combination of these reciprocating and interrelated effects will make your students generally happier, and optimism creates a snowball effect in which it generates more excitement about what they are able to accomplish and grows simultaneously.
It also keeps their minds open. This is crucial for their positive and productive consideration of obstacles and opportunities alike and, of course, effective or creative methodologies for going about completing assignments in class. And while we love when our students are writing better essays and responding more enthusiastically to discussions about various texts, our real job as teachers is to provide students with the tools to give themselves the best lives possible. This is entirely dependent on their interests and desires. By allowing them to write and reflect upon them, they become more hopeful about them and more determined to achieve them. While their hope is in a wide variety of things, the result of this is often a more defined plan for how they will attain their goals, the will to see this plan through, and - a bonus for teachers - more engagement in the classroom.
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