Black Gold Regional Schools

I was reading the Phi Delta Kappan magazine and was impressed with an article written by the senior scientist and researcher.  It is titled, "Making Ripples: How Principals and Teachers Can Spread Hope Throughout Our Schools".  The research demonstrates that helping students become more hopeful can improve their ability to learn, as well as make them more resilient for future challenges.  Hope, the ideas and energy for the future, is one of the most important predictors of success of our youth.  The research identified the following:

• Hope is linked consistently to attendance and credits earned
• Hopeful high school students have overall higher grade point averages
• Hopeful middle school students have better grades in core subjects
• The predictive power of hope remained significant even when controlling for intelligence

Author Shane J. Lopez stated that hopeful students are able to develop multiple strategies to achieve goals in the event they face problems along the way.  Obstacles, are then viewed as challenges to be overcome, by garnering support and implementing alternative pathways.  They perceive the likelihood of good outcomes , and these students are focused on success and less on distress.   Gallup data has 20 years of field research to demonstrate that hopeful students do better in school and life than do less hopeful students. 

Gallup has also found that people expect their leaders to give them hope and for their children's teachers to inspire youth.  How fitting that our core purpose in Black Gold Regional Schools is to "Inspire Success".   Research identifies high-hope adults:

• perform better at work
• have higher well-being
• and live longer

What more evidence would one need than this research if one wants to live a good and long life, and improve the learning of students.  As administrators, we can spread hope by encouraging autonomy, modeling a hopeful lifestyle, promoting strength-based development, and telling stories about how students and educators overcome obstacles to realize important goals.  The article goes on to ask "what would a school look like if all of the students in the building were hopeful?"  What a powerful question.  As an educator and superintendent, I believe in the power of hope, always have ... always will.  I know that the day to day work done by administrators, teachers and support staff in Black Gold makes a huge impact on the lives of the students you teach.