A Year of Nurturing Hope and Purpose
For My Students and Myself
Finding My Path
Last year, I made a major life change. After 11 years of teaching in a school that I loved (and still love, in point of fact), I moved to a new school and district to explore a new path for myself. It was clear that I needed to try something new, as by last May I was going through the motions in the classroom — at best — and feeling none of the spark or passion I normally bring to the classroom.
This June, after a year that’s arguably been professionally even more challenging than the last, I feel so different. I have a sense of self-efficacy that I hadn’t realized was lacking, and I had the pleasure of laughing alongside my students almost every day of the last few months. Changing jobs definitely helped me this year, but more importantly I’ve been exploring how to nurture hope and purpose with my teenage students.
The question that I started with last summer was: What happens if I focus on nurturing hope in my classroom next year? What I’ve learned is that nurturing my students nurtures myself.
Hope and Self-Efficacy
Through summer and into the fall, I spent some time trying to define what “hope” meant in the context of my classroom. I looked into how others had defined it, and played around with some ideas of my own, but honestly I hadn’t come to any satisfying conclusion until a few weeks ago at our final Teacher Leadership in Writing meeting when a colleague asked me directly how I would define it.
After some thought, I decided that, to me, hope in the classroom means self-efficacy for myself and my students.
Without a sense of self-efficacy, we’re all just going through the motions. Students might (or might not) be quiet and compliant in such a classroom, but there’s no joy in the learning. And a classroom without joy is not the humane classroom I aspire to co-create with my students. It’s also not a classroom that I’d wake up in the morning feeling excited to return to, and I can’t imagine students feeling that way, either.
Love and Leadership
When I left off with my writing in February, I was thinking about how to use love and leadership to guide students into more positive mindsets about school. I am proud to note that on the last day of school, one of my youngest students told another student — unprompted — that, “This is the first time I’ve ever felt sad about the end of a school year.” This student was among a handful who had also mused aloud about their newfound desire for year-round school, because they’ve had such a great experience this year.
How did I get here? Not alone, that’s for sure. I’ve tried to highlight positive leadership examples from my students — like the time one of my sophomores took over the direction of a group of students moving a heavy, but delicate, piece of equipment into place; or the many times when students comforted a classmate who had been going through a tough time. And when students were exhibiting negative leadership examples, like roasting their classmates or complaining about almost everything we did, I tried to meet them with love and understanding rather than conflict and scolding.
Was I perfect this year? Of course not. I’m human, too, and I made plenty of mistakes, especially when my emotions were raw. But I always modeled apologizing and restoring the harm, and I tried to remind myself that it’s almost never personal when a student is feeling negative. My most frequent student complainer — I like to joke that complaining is their love language — told me in an end-of-year reflection that I should “keep doing what [I’m] doing,” so I do believe I’m on the right track.
Conclusion
Last month, a fellow GMWP-er talked about how her advanced learners benefited from a “humanity-first” approach to teaching, and that made me think about humane education as universal design. Is there any student — or educator — who wouldn’t benefit from a humanity-first approach? It’s certainly been the key to keeping me in the profession, and I know in my heart that humane teaching has been a lifeline to my students, as well.
Closing out a school year of hope and humanity, I am glad for some time to rest, but I’m also tremendously excited for the school year to come. It’s been a while since I’ve felt this optimistic and excited, and I owe a debt of gratitude to my students for helping me get here. To completely butcher Obi-Wan Kenobi’s words one last time, “I have a good feeling about this.”
