Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others (26 page)

New-style career days.
Schools across America are revamping career days to make them more relevant and engaging. Some schools are inviting local men and women who love their jobs (according to Gallup research, only 1 in 5 workers do) to discuss how classroom topics relate to their work today. Folks who are enthusiastic about their work tend to be innovative in how they use their knowledge and skills, and capable of telling a good story about what they do to almost any audience. These are the people who should be attending career days and recruiting students into internships. Students become more active participants when they have their own questions to prime the discussion. When we hosted Kids Day at the Gallup Omaha campus, the youngsters who attended were prepared with the following questions: (1) What do you like to do each day at work and why?, (2) How does your best friend at work make each day better?, (3) How do you feel
when you get to do what you do best at work and why?, and (4) How does your work make the world a better place?

Project-based learning.
Project-based learning is engaging to students, and it builds knowledge and mastery. Students like Philadelphia’s Azeem Hill get hooked on learning when we demonstrate how today’s (and every day’s) classroom experiences are associated with real work and real life. “People seem to believe that . . . that if you can’t learn at a desk in a row, and if you can’t take a test, that you’re not smart. But some people learn better when they’re able to go to the shop and see it in action.” Azeem’s high school teacher, Simon Hauger, agrees. An electrical engineer turned inner-city math and science teacher in West Philadelphia, Hauger helped fifteen high school students build a “badass hybrid” car. The students wanted to create a cooler car, one that was fast and fuel efficient, that would be popular with young drivers. Hauger bought into their goal and worked with them every afternoon applying science, technology, engineering, and math principles far beyond what they were learning in class.

The car, their 160-miles-per-gallon Factory Vive GTM biodiesel, made it to the semifinals of the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize and won the “Next Generation Award” from
Popular Mechanics
. The students received special recognition from President Obama for their work. During the launch of a 2010 STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education initiative, the president said, “They didn’t have a lot of money. They didn’t have the best equipment. They certainly didn’t have every advantage in life. What they had was a program that challenged them to solve problems and to work together, to learn and build and create. And that’s the kind of spirit and ingenuity that we have to foster. That’s the potential that we can harness all across America. That’s what will help our young people to fulfill their promise to realize their dreams and to help this nation succeed in the years to come.”

Hauger capitalized on the success of the after-school project-based learning program and got permission and support from the school
district and funders to open the Sustainability Workshop. The workshop functions as a school that models how to “unleash the creative and intellectual potential of young people to solve the world’s toughest problems.”

Demystifying college costs.
Students need real, understandable information about the costs of college. Many don’t know the details about how often-quoted tuition, room, and board expenses can be offset by the amounts available from scholarships, grants, and loans. Destin Mesmin points out that students who know that need-based financial aid can make college more affordable are more likely to spend time on homework today. The United States government is creating a college scorecard to give students a more realistic assessment of what a degree costs at each college and the amount of debt they might accrue. This online tool will help compare college after college on expenses and graduation rates. With real information about resources and expenses, students are less likely to dismiss further education because “I (my family) can’t afford it.”

Bridging high school and college.
Traditional college visits in junior and senior year come too late to motivate many students. Take freshmen and sophomores to the local college to meet some of the school’s best professors. Arrange for them to sit in on a class, take notes, and prepare to report on how the class material could be applied in the real world. Then invite the professors to join the students for lunch. Facilitate a discussion about what you are teaching in class or at home, how it relates to the professor’s field, and how that connects to tomorrow’s job requirements. The professional staffs of the federally funded programs Educational Talent Search and Upward Bound are masters at bringing the future into the present with campus visits. They help students as young as ten to attend college courses. Students in their early teens can live on campus during six weeks in the summer, immersing themselves in college life and connecting their current experiences with their future at college and work.

Once a student is future bound, she starts entertaining goals beyond
school. The goals that are most salient to young people are the same ones that captivate most of us caring, hopeful adults. Specifically, they want a good job. It is the image of having a good job that pulls people through the years it takes them to finish their high school and undergraduate education. And they want that good job to provide security for the second outcome they are pursuing: a happy family. Although ideas about what a happy family looks like differ vastly from person to person, young people and adults covet an image of a group of people coexisting and helping one another in daily life. It is these goals—the good job and happy family—that help young people overcome the rigors of high school and college. These expectations, the foundations of a good life, are what draw us forward.

Many young people dream the American dream, believe it can be achieved, and don’t have a clue how to make it a reality. Their will often exceeds their ways, which hamstrings their hope.

Students generally are confident and think “I can do anything!”
According to a 2003 study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, American kids are number one in the world in confidence. For the most part, students have adequate will and say they are willing to put in the hard work to pursue a future they are excited about.

The big problem is that they lack the ways or necessary strategies to reach the big goals, such as graduation and employment.
In 2009 the Gallup Student Poll showed that 92 percent strongly believed that they would graduate from high school, but only 62 percent of them strongly believed that they could come up with many ways to get good grades. Nearly half of American students strongly believed that they would find a good job after graduation, but only a third of them (35 percent) strongly believed that they could find ways around any problem that might arise in life.

I believe that our young people lack the ways of hope because the how of school, work, and life doesn’t get the attention it warrants. Perhaps because of the intense pressure to teach and learn content in each class during each school year (driven by well-meaning commitment to excellence or fear-based compulsion to do well on state testing), the process of getting good grades and solving daily problems may remain a mystery. Parents may recognize and praise a test score or a win on the field but may not explain or emphasize the how of goal pursuit.

Student hope may be enhanced by small efforts to teach them the ways to study for tests, prepare for the examination period, track grades over time, solve interpersonal disputes, compete in athletics, pursue career interests, and interview for jobs. When students have both the will and the ways, they are more likely to reach their goals.

My all-time favorite way to teach the ways of hope is to do it on the sly, before people realize I am working hard to get them to think more strategically about the future. I use the Hope Camera Project, which was originally developed for use in a children’s hospital and then adapted for use in a school-based hope program. A description of a recent application of the Hope Camera Project illustrates how a project-based assignment can teach ways of hope.

School counselor Jennifer Magnuson-Stessman gave her thirty-six fifth graders and sixth graders disposable cameras and a week’s time to document hope in their lives. She enticed them into action by promising them to display their work at a community art show for their friends, family, educators, and other community members.

Jennifer kicked off the project by laying out the steps that would lead the students to a fun and rewarding night at the art opening. First, each student would capture images of hope in their daily lives in twenty-eight photos. In consultation with Jennifer, they would pick the one photo that best represented hope to them. Next, they were to write a brief essay, to be edited and reedited with her, to tell their story. Finally, the students would print the photos, crop them, mat and frame them, hang them along with their essay, then rehearse for the art show.

Jennifer walked each student through each step. She nudged them to think about multiple ways to make the progress they wanted. Then one night in April 2011, hope was on display during the art show in the school gym. My wife and I attended the unveiling with about one hundred school officials, students, and family members who sampled apple juice in wineglasses, with fresh strawberries and cubed cheese. As Alli and I viewed the photos, read the essays, and chatted with the students, we realized that some of them had considered their project to be a harbinger of hope over the course of the past winter and spring. Family strife struck most, academic struggles slowed down many, and health problems plagued several students or their siblings. No matter what students were grappling with, they had “the project.” We were impressed by their ability to figure out how to get things done and experienced a palpable sense of hope that night—a feeling that I still remember fondly today.

The Hope Camera Project can be replicated in any youth development setting and can be modified in ways that make the exercise more appropriate for particular purposes. For example, a career development spin could be put on the project. Each student would take pictures of people who love jobs that they themselves might want to do one day. By meeting numerous people in jobs they love, students could become familiar with the pathways specific to a particular career or, more generally, to making a decision about a college major.

The project costs about thirty dollars per student to complete. This covers the disposable camera and prints, the matting and the hanging of the selected photos, and the finger foods and apple cider for the student and guests. For a thousand dollars, thirty-three students can learn how to create pathways and share hope with dozens of friends and family.

This is just one way we can teach people how to match their will with their ways. Once students learn how to think flexibly and create alternative strategies to reach their goals, they can use this skill for a lifetime.

A community audit is one of the most effective ways to buffer large groups of students from hope killers and to recruit extra willpower for kids in need. Surveying school and neighborhood assets and deficits, both physical and social, helps to determine what resources are available to children and what problems need solving.

An audit might lead to a high schooler creating a no-bullying campaign on her block. A mother asking a well-intentioned friend to stop speaking to her child in a punitive manner. A neighbor lobbying city leaders to eliminate safety problems or blight. It might spur a principal to guide ineffective and hopeless teachers to better work. Extra willpower for students might come from efforts to improve school lunches, provide more mentoring, or add extracurricular activities that help children learn to regulate their own behaviors.

Nancy Oberst, a highly skilled community auditor and one of my heroes, has dedicated her life to making kids’ lives better. As a classroom teacher, she helped elementary students look over the horizon and think beyond their neighborhoods and the limits placed on them by others. To do this, she surveyed what her students and school community needed. Then she provided the necessary instrumental support by enlisting the help of people from all corners of her Omaha community.

As principal of Liberty Elementary, Nancy turned the school into a community center valued by the entire neighborhood. She got to know the locals by spending summers canvassing neighborhoods and visiting schoolchildren’s homes. When she found health and safety issues were undermining her students’ efforts at school, she wasted no time in addressing them.

To tip the health and safety scales in the favor of the kids, she got the school written into a grant that set up a health clinic in the school. She shielded students walking to school from the violence of the neighborhood with help of vigilant neighbors and assertive safety officers.
Nancy also struck a deal with the local prostitutes to conduct business away from Liberty Elementary and the children’s favorite walking route. In response to Nancy’s respect and diplomacy, some prostitutes took on a motherly role and worked hard to make sure that students crossed streets safely and steered clear of neighborhood trouble.

Nancy says, “I never turned anyone down when they offered to help.” She accepted raincoats for the students, even when all of them had bad weather gear, because she knew the students’ siblings could use them. She took all the food that people offered the school, because she knew that the neighborhood adults could use an extra meal. She did this in order to create goodwill—which would keep the givers connected to the school in a way that made their assistance more reliable in times of need.

When need does arise, Nancy says that “[e]veryone just kind of gets pulled in.” People are quick to show up if you build the kind of hope super-network that Nancy built at Liberty.