Category: Connect

Over the past several weeks, we have been diving deep into the 7 Steps of Hope Work. Before showing the overall benefits of Hope work, let’s recap one more time what those 7 Steps are:

Recap: The 7 Steps of Hope Work

1. Introduce Hope: We show that Hope isn’t an emotion or reaction, but it’s a mindset that they can learn.
2. Goal Setting: We help them develop personally relevant goals.
3. Pathways: We establish ways for them to reach their goals, showing that it’s possible.
4. Willpower: We find the child’s source of motivation, help them identify it, and help them utilize it to use their pathways.
5. Problem Solving: We identify obstacles that might occur and prepare strategies to help the child overcome them.
6. Create Hope Visual: We create a visual map to refer to everything they learned and planned during Hope Work to help them succeed.
7. Re-Goal Setting: As children grow, their goals grow with them and we help them learn to re-goal set for consistently helpful strategies and success.

Now that we’ve talked in-depth about each of the steps, how does nurturing Hope affect children long term?

Hope Buffers Adversity

Believing that you have the power to make tomorrow better than today makes dealing with today’s misfortune and difficulties more palatable. The seven steps of Hope work provide students with strategies that they can use today, tomorrow, and every day – giving them something protective and effective to help them whenever adversity arises. Over time, this makes hardship easier to deal with and feel less threatening, helping them feel more secure in their future and themselves.

Hope Improves Academics

Schools teaching Hope with My Best Me have a 68% reduction of suspensions and expulsion, 81% fewer drops outs than average, and have a 44% lower occurrence of absenteeism. Furthermore, students experiencing Hope work and becoming more hopeful increase their grade-level averages and have a much higher chance of graduating with good standing from their school. In addition, 59% of hiring managers look for new hires with SEL traits, meaning students are also more likely to be hired after high school, during college, and after higher education.

Wrapping it Up…

Hope is much more concrete than simple optimism. It is a valuable strategy, a source of comfort, and a meaningful step toward a better tomorrow every day, no matter the circumstance. We do Hope work…because Hope works.

Hope Rising SEL’s definition of Hope is making a difference in many schools and communities across the country.

If your school isn’t using My Best Me yet, we would love to help you bring Hope to your school. Our sales team is ready to answer your questions and demo My Best Me for you. Contact us to start spreading Hope in your school.

Welcome back to our Nurturing Hope blog series, where we dive into each of the 7 steps of nurturing Hope, why it is important, and how it changes students’ lives. Today, we are going to dive into step 6: create a hope visual.

What is a Hope Visual?

A Hope visual is a map we create with the student that references all of the Hope work steps they have learned and provides a point of reference for their plan of success. In this Hope Visual, the student has a tangible reminder of what they learned so they know that they have the power to make tomorrow better than today and can see how.

Establishing Structure

Providing structure, predictability, and next steps for a student is key to success. Students who have experienced trauma and adversity often feel stressed by unpredictability and lack of control over their circumstances. To help combat this, our definition of Hope provides the student with a sense of agency in their situations. At the same time, Hope work creates predictable strategies they can follow to feel a sense of control in specific, healthy ways. We want to help students adjust in a healthy way to the unpredictability of life and providing a visual structure reference for students is one of the main ways we do that.

When first starting to engage with Hope strategies, it can be challenging to remember everything they learned and how to apply it. These concepts are often brand new to the student and drastically change how they see new situations. To help them adjust to these concepts and apply them, the structure of a Hope visual can be very comforting and provide a helping hand both at home and in the classroom.

Connecting Concepts

Each step of nurturing Hope we take in Hope work is related. In fact, their interconnection, as you can see from this series, is crucial for success. For example, without establishing the student’s willpower and providing pathways, goal setting isn’t helpful. Without providing problem-solving strategies, the student may get overwhelmed and lose belief in themselves to make tomorrow better. Creating a visual way for students to connect these concepts and see how they all work together helps them see those connections and strengthen themselves with it.

More in the Series…

In our next blog, we are going to talk about the final step: re-goal setting.

If you’re just joining in, be sure to read Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, Step 4 , and Step 5 to catch up!

Hope Rising SEL’s definition of Hope is making a difference in many schools and communities across the country.

If your school isn’t using My Best Me yet, we would love to help you bring Hope to your school. Our sales team is ready to answer your questions and demo My Best Me for you. Contact us to start spreading Hope in your school.

Welcome back to our Nurturing Hope blog series, where we dive into each of the 7 steps of nurturing Hope, why it is important, and how it changes students’ lives. Today, we are going to dive into step 5: Problem Solving.

What is Problem Solving?

Once we’ve established Hope as a mindset, set goals, established pathways, and defined a student’s willpower, it’s important that we identify potential obstacles. During this part of Hope work, we focus on finding and creating solutions to complex issues the student may face. Students of various ages, grades, and backgrounds will have different problems with a range of complexity. Because of that, My Best Me focuses on understanding those problems from the student’s point of view and helps them engage with age-appropriate solutions.

Acknowledging Life Has Adversity

While My Best Me focuses on the positive of ‘making tomorrow better than today,’ it’s essential to recognize that life contains problems. As a trauma information curriculum, we understand most of the students going through My Best Me have experienced adversity, stress, and trauma in their lives. Hope Work helps students deal with this past adversity and presents Hope-centered problem solving for future challenges. By preparing them for these possible problems ahead, we provide the opportunity and guidance to overcome the issues they face with Hope. As they are given these tools, and repeatedly experience overcoming hardship with Hope, adversity itself becomes less daunting over time.

Personalized Solutions through Willpower

Not all problems accommodate the personalized focus we have in My Best Me. There may only be one or two ways to solve a particular problem that make personalized problem-solving strategies difficult. However, there are more ways to individualize the process for the student to help engage them and motivate them to face these things head-on.

In our most recent blog, we talked about Step 4: Willpower. Each student has their own sources of motivation for working toward making their tomorrow better than today. When working through a problem that is difficult or has limited solutions, it is important in Hope work to engage what motivates that student to press on and show them how they can use that to face their current problem.

More in the Series…

Join us next time to see how we bring all the previous steps together to create a Hope visual. The first four steps of this process help establish Hope and provide the student with hands-on successes to grow their hope. Be sure to read Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, and Step 4 to catch up!

Hope Rising SEL’s definition of Hope is making a difference in many schools and communities across the country.

If your school isn’t using My Best Me yet, we would love to help you bring Hope to your school. Our sales team is ready to answer your questions and demo My Best Me for you. Contact us to start spreading Hope in your school.