As a teacher, one question has ping-ponged around my brain for years. Read my other posts and you’ll see this driving question: Is there a link between children’s passions and what career they choose as adults? How can I, as an educator, help open the pathways for children to achieve those dreams?

This question has led to many changes in my life. In the classroom, I’ve developed peer coaches as an alternative to meaningless jobs, use asset-based small groups, and regularly facilitate passion/genius projects. Outside the classroom, I’ve completed a whole middle grade manuscript about innovative children and have an idea for a series of kids/educational books about this very thing. 

Above all, I want my students to find meaning in their education. I want my students to find meaning in their lives.

Enter The Hope Scale

Recently, my district brought in the amazing Justin Campbell of The Urban Connection Project, who made me emotional as he was speaking. He was unknowingly talking to my very soul as an educator. He put my wonderings into a structure that directly related to the observations I’d been making in my classroom and my life. It’s called The Hope Scale. While it’s important to note that I believe anyone, at any age, can find themselves along this continuum, I will be describing in generalities about my experience with students.

According to The Hope Scale, there are four levels that all students (and adults) fall into. The first level is Introduce, which describes the person who has an interest but is unaware of the options out there for them or lacks the belief they can achieve them. The second level, Inspire, is where people have dreams, but cannot see the path to reach them. According to Campbell, these two levels are where younger elementary students typically live. 

This is where my passion lives.

Starting Early

So often we start the career conversation in middle school or high school when students may already fall into the next two levels, Enhance or Reignite, where they either need encouragement, or resilience as they adapt their dreams to one that may be more attainable. 

But, what if educators had tools to develop attainable dreams in our students at the very early grades? After all, the Common Core Standards are built to achieve “college and career readiness,” so I’m all for exposing students to a wide span of options early. As humans, our dreams may always adapt and change of course, but I believe it is the exposure to options that is missing when adults tell kids, “you can be anything you want to be.” 

Ask any four year old what they want to be when they grow up, and you’ll see how limited their lens is. They like soccer, they want to be a soccer player. They like Legos, they want to be a builder. They like singing, they want to be a singer. What they don’t see is the drop down menu of all their other options these passions can lead to. Then when they reach the age where they realize how incredibly difficult it is to actually become their favorite rock star, they don’t know all the many other careers their passion for music or performance can lead to. So they give up. They feel like a failure. They struggle to find their place.

What if?

What if students did know there were options? Would they find more value in math, reading, science, the arts, knowing that any one of these subjects could be applied to their dreams? That dreams don’t have to look one exact way?  What impact would this awareness of options have on our most striving, under-privileged, or marginalized students? Would they find more satisfaction in their careers as adults, feeling like they reached their dream even if they build parts for air crafts rather than going to space?

In conclusion, I’m afraid I do not have a conclusion. I do not have the answers. But I do know I am now on the Inspire level of The Hope Scale. I have dreams for what this passion of mine can do for kids, but I need to find my path to achieving them. 

Maybe this post is step one. I have hope.