I began 2011-12 with a charge to my staff: Find joy in your work this year. It seemed like the appropriate focus for a year that promised many challenges--and the staff came through with regular expressions of gratitude to each other for the many ways that each brought joy to our school community. At our final PLT, a teacher presented each of us with a small bag of remembrances to help us keep the joyful spirit alive.
This year, I plan to start the year helping my team remember joy and look forward to hope. Hope is misunderstood I think, largely because Americans have taken the word "hopefully" and turned it into an expression that is tentative and unsure: "Will you learn to play the guitar this year?" "Hopefully"--as in "I haven't really looked into it, don't really want to practice, and doubt that I'd like it that much anyway."
Hope is different than expectation. My dog regularly displays expectation: when the treat drawer is opened or the leash gets attached to her collar she perks up and pays attention. But she can't "hope." Hope is the ability to envision a "different" than what currently is and to have the capacity, commitment, and drive to do what it takes to accomplish that "different." Like Pavlov's, my dog can only anticipate what is known.
Some of us are better at hope than others. I had a friend who was very content with life, so content, in fact, that I asked him once if he ever hoped for anything. He said he had, but he didn't really expect much. I told him that a perfect epitaph for him would be "He was a content man, for he lived with hope but without expectation"--a recipe for contentment, perhaps, but an oxymoron when it comes to accomplishing things that have yet to be revealed.
So this is a year of hope, of taking what we know, what we do, and what we will learn about students and learning, and transform our schools to meet all needs and help all students find success. Do we expect this will happen? Yes. Hope-fully.
