I’ve just returned from a little personal leave and used it for some valuable personal and professional reading time.
I found myself checking out the work of a late, yet highly renowned, US psychologist called Charles Snyder. Snyder is responsible for a truly impressive body of work on what he calls Hope Theory.
Hope is a concept that has always fascinated me and something I’ve often said is missing from our country’s most impoverished and remote communities. Particularly as applies to our Aboriginal communities, the absence of hope in emerging youth is both alarming and a source of national shame. That’s my view anyway.
Anyway, Snyder views hope as being a cognitive process, which makes it far more concrete and tangible than the more emotional view of hope that I’d built for myself. He even has a three-part framework for hope that I thought I’d share with you so we can view our classrooms and schools through this lens.
Part 1: Goals
For hope to exist, the goals and targets of each student need to be clear, succinct and co-constructed. They need to be their goals, not ours.
Part 2: Agency
Students should feel that they have personal control over their actions and can personally influence the outcome. In other words, they get to make decisions about their expectations for themselves.
Part 3: Pathways
Students are shown multiple ways to achieve their goals. This means schools would encourage flexibility and encourage creative ways to reach goals. One size doth not fit all… that is, if you want hopeful kids.
Snyder’s work prompts a pretty curly question to ask at your next PLC or Staff Meeting… “How hopeful or hopeless are the classrooms in our school?”
Keep fighting that good fight,
P.S. If this sparked a little hope for what’s possible in your school, join me for The Teacher Consistency Code – an online workshop designed to turn that hope into action. We’ll unpack exactly how to build real, lasting consistency in your team (without burning anyone out).
The Teacher Consistency Code
Thursday 19 June 2025
4.00pm
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