Dear Meghan: My daughter is 9 and is generally a great kid. However, for years I’ve noticed she has a very low tolerance for frustration or failure. When trying something new, if she can’t immediately master it, she completely freezes. This generally means whining and begging for someone to do the task for her, often getting angry if they refuse. “It’s impossible,” and “Why won’t anyone help me?!” are common refrains.
I don’t think these things are beyond her ability, they just require her to push herself a bit. And she will do this for activities she has repeatedly completed in the past. Unless she is 100 percent confident in her ability to do something right the first time, her instinct seems to be to balk.
My general rule is I will help her but not unless she has at least tried on her own. This often leads us to frustrating impasses. I’ve tried talking to her when things are calm. We’ve discussed that her coaches and I give her challenges we think she is ready for — not impossible ones! — and how if she doesn’t think she can do it, she’s setting herself up for failure. I often say, “We can do hard things.” I’ve also honestly told her my patience for doing these activities, which are hobbies she enjoys and wants me to do with her, is limited if she behaves like this. She always insists she wants to continue said activities though generally tunes out of my “hard things” pep talks.
Do I just keep on? Is there anything else I can try? I hate to withdraw from these activities because I hope the exposure to frustration will eventually build some tolerance.🗣️
Quitting: Just reading this letter leaves me frustrated; that’s a lot of back and forth. And I get it: With a typical kid, all of the tricks you’ve been using may work. You let her try on her own, and then help. You’ve tried talking to her when she’s calm. You’ve told her you and her coaches only give her challenges you think she can handle. You give her pep talks. You’ve told her about your own frustration. This perfectionism has been happening for years, so my curiosity is around whether she started whining and then the power struggles began, whether there’s another issue that needs more support (anxiety, neurodiversity, other challenges) or whether it’s a combination (which is most likely the case).
Meghan Leahy is a parenting coach and the author of “Parenting Outside the Lines.” She has given advice about toddler tantrums, teens and mental health and co-parenting.Ask Meghan for parenting advice here.End of carousel
Let’s begin with the basics and stop doing what isn’t working. I would guess there is too much talking happening here. When we talk endlessly at and to our children, they tune out (which you’re already experiencing). No one — adults or children — takes in a lecture or pep talk if they don’t feel understood first, and it could be that your daughter doesn’t have a lot of room to be frustrated. Are there techniques and ways to help her? Sure, but none of them will work until you stop lecturing her and start listening to her.
Try listening more and you may find solutions in her complaints. If you begin mirroring her emotions — “So, this task feels impossible to do” or “You feel like no one will help you” — she may begin to relax enough for you to say: “So, tell me what would change if someone helped you?” or “What about this task feels impossible?” Maybe she won’t have an answer or maybe, just maybe, your daughter will give you a response that makes sense! While I get the “waiting to help her until she tries once” rule, you actually don’t need to adhere to that. It’s not building the resilience you want to see.
If your daughter is suffering from anxiety or another challenge, you may need more support, starting with her pediatrician. As tiring as this may be, please write a detailed list of when the whining and wanting to quit began, as well as everyone it happens with. You will want to look at patterns; it will be helpful if you need to reach out to specialists. To be clear, you will need to parent differently, regardless of whether a diagnosis calls for it, but you will parent more effectively with more information.
In the meantime, let’s shift our perspective on helping her build some more tolerance for failure. Most humans (children especially) learn best in apprenticeship-like relationships. Of course, some children seem to forge ahead on their own, unafraid of trying things and, even if they fail, they keep going, but most children like to work next to their parents or teacher. I would try bypassing all the power struggles with the talking and back and forth, and begin by teaching her. Model the activity or challenge, have her try, rinse and repeat.
Rather than focusing on the mastery of the task, we focus on building resilience for years to come. When kids fail with a compassionate parent nearby (who doesn’t shame or bypass their emotions with false cheer), it’s more likely they will feel sad, move through it and try again.
At Thanksgiving, Americans think about the spirit of community that animates the country at its best. But in a year characterized by so much political and racial discord, you have to wonder whether the communal quilt is fraying at the edges.
Here’s an idea for reweaving our country’s fabric through a program of national service. This proposal was outlined by two Americans with very different backgrounds: Tom Brokaw, the former NBC News anchor, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. They’re joined by dozens of other advocates in an initiative called the Franklin Project at the Aspen Institute.
Brokaw, who was awarded the Medal of Freedom on Monday by President Obama, explored in his book “The Greatest Generation” the shared ideals that kept the country together during the Great Depression and World War II. He wrote recently, in promoting the national service idea: “For an emerging generation of Americans, now is an opportunity to renew and strengthen [our] tradition of rising to meet the challenges an unpredictable world places in its path.”
McChrystal has led U.S. men and women in the most demanding form of service — on the battlefield. In an article this summer for the journal Democracy, he argued: “What we need is to create a culture of service in America, one in which a year of service is culturally expected, if not quite mandatory by law.” He contended that making civic participation a rite of passage for young Americans could “mend an increasingly shorn society.”
The Franklin Project envisions a network that by 2023 would allow 1 million Americans between 18 and 28 to serve the country each year through the military or civilian programs such as Teach for America or the Peace Corps and eligible nonprofit organizations. Unlike a wartime draft, this program would rely on a cultural norm that service is expected.
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McChrystal argues that a belief in service is already embedded in U.S. culture but that it isn’t mobilized. He refers to a 2010 Pew Research Center poll that reported that 57 percent of the millennial generation (those born after 1980) had done volunteer work in the previous 12 months.
Data from existing programs show a striking imbalance between the desire to serve and the opportunities to do so. McChrystal cites AmeriCorps, a program to encourage service in schools, nonprofits and other civic organizations. In 2011, it had 580,000 applications for about 80,000 slots, he writes. Similarly, Teach for America, a program to recruit teachers for schools in disadvantaged areas, had 48,000 applications for 5,200 openings in 2011.
To match demand and supply, the Franklin Project is creating a “service year exchange.” This online platform would match young people seeking service positions with qualified organizations. Opportunities would include nonprofits, schools and colleges, and state, local and national governments. The driving force for young people, McChrystal says, would be the expectation that spending a year helping others is part of American citizenship.
A laboratory to test this idea is being developed by Arizona State University, one of the nation’s largest and most innovative universities. Michael Crow, the school’s president, has proposed a Public Service Academy that will open in fall 2015.
“We must train the next generation to work together as leaders,” says the Web site for the academy. Crow said in an e-mail that he wants his new venture to “prime the pipeline” for the Franklin Project’s work.
What’s attractive about this approach is that it isn’t an old-fashioned draft that compels service but a modern, technology-driven network that matches people with jobs. The paradox of social networks is that they sometimes seem to fragment people into niche groups and political affinities. Here’s a social network that would connect diverse communities rather than reinforce dividing lines.
Brokaw writes that he got the idea for “The Greatest Generation” during a 1984 reporting trip to the Normandy beaches where the D-Day landings had taken place 40 years before. He sensed that the American victory was a story of “ordinary people whose lives are laced with the markings of greatness.”
The ethic of service may have been easier for a nation rooted in farms and small towns, but it’s an idea that could bond and energize a diverse and fragmented 21st-century America. “They answered the call to help save the world,” Brokaw writes of his heroes. Still an attractive challenge.
I woke up the morning of Nov. 6 with a sinking feeling. Turning on both my phone and TV, I learned to my shock that Donald Trump had been elected.
I was in denial for several days, my stomach in turmoil. Then, I realized what I was really experiencing: grief. I looked up Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. I moved on from denial to anger to bargaining. What could I have done to prevent this from happening? I should have been out on the streets protesting the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling and ringing doorbells. What kind of poor excuse for an American was I, not to have acted?Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter
Then, I got severely depressed. I took an antidepressant and called my old shrink. (A lot of good that did. He was as depressed as I was!) How was I going to live with my deepest fears? When was I going to get to acceptance?
That’s when I turned to meditation.🎤
I had joined a Zen sangha (community) outside Boston the year before. It’s led by Robert Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard University, co-author of “The Good Life” on happiness and the director of the famous Grant Study, the Harvard Study of Adult Development. The sangha meets every Monday at 7:30 p.m.
I was not new to meditation. But this sangha was different. It was a weekly commitment. I enjoyed attending via Zoom. As the election neared, the hour was sometimes the only clarity I found all week, even when some of the chants made no sense to me at all. One, the Heart Sutra, completely baffled me: “Nor is there pain, or cause of pain, or cease in pain, or noble path to lead from pain; Not even wisdom to attain! Attainment too is emptiness.”
When we discussed it, everyone else in the group seemed to understand. I finally got up the courage to say, “I don’t get it.”
Everyone laughed, and, at first, I thought they were laughing at me. To my relief, a lot of them didn’t get it either. Waldinger laughed, too, and patiently explained the meaning of the sutra. I listened carefully, but, to tell the truth, I still didn’t understand it.
I flashed back to many years ago, when the Aspen Institute had a small lunch for the Dalai Lama. I persuaded my husband, Ben Bradlee, to go, reluctantly. The Dalai Lama, who had written for On Faith, the blog I ran for The Post, was an adorable man, dressed in sleeveless saffron robes. He spoke to us through an interpreter about Buddhism. He was a very jolly fellow and giggled much of the time. At the end of the Dalai Lama’s presentation, Ben sat back in his chair and in a loud, growly voice said, “I don’t get it.” Everyone burst out laughing. (The irony about Ben was, he might have been the most practicing Buddhist I knew. He worked in the woods for eight hours a day when we went to the country, chopping wood, clearing and burning brush. He called it mind-emptying, which is basically meditating. He said it was the only way he made it through Watergate.)
At first, I found the sessions weird. Waldinger — who admitted he had found it weird in the beginning, too — would do a quick, pithy reading, and then there would be chanting and bowing and bells and candles for 10 or 15 minutes, then wooden claps, a quick break and a 25-minute sit. I learned early on the importance of breathing. We know that when you get upset or agitated, you should take a deep breath. This is especially true of meditation. If your mind is going crazy, you can chant your mantra and concentrate on your breathing until you calm down. It really works.
I found the ritual soothing. Afterward, Waldinger would often give a dharma talk, followed by a discussion, final vows and a roundtable of what we had gotten out of the session. It was a bit Peter, Paul and Mary for my taste.
But I had an odd sensation of feeling secure in this sangha. My brother Bill is a practicing Buddhist and meditates daily. He is one of the most peaceful, loving people I have ever known. I had been reading a lot about the effects of meditation, and I wanted to experience those effects. So I kept at it, turning down other invitations for Monday nights so as not to miss a session. I liked the dharma talks and the koans (riddles) and the discussions. The sits were not boring but relaxing, though I didn’t find them enlightening in the beginning. Every few weeks, Waldinger would have short breakout sessions with each of us. It was basically a five-minute shrink session that I got more out of than most 50-minute shrink sessions. During these sessions, I achieved what I thought was enlightenment, though Waldinger convinced me that should not be a goal since most of us will never really achieve enlightenment — in this life anyway.
A year ago, disaster struck. I got covid and had a major stroke. When I became lucid, I was hit with more tragedies: deaths of close friends, extreme family medical problems and worries about the state of the country. Hardly able to sit up, I was inspired to return to the sangha two weeks after the stroke. This time, I felt it was working for me. I felt embraced. The bells and chants were reassuring, the dharma talks meaningful, and the meditation itself was an enormous release.
Before I joined, I had been intimidated by the idea that I had to push negative thoughts, or all thoughts, out of my head. I learned that you don’t have to empty your mind, that you can let thoughts come and go, that you can feel anger, sadness, frustration, despair — all the things you feel in your daily life. So I accepted every thought and, as Waldinger advised, tried to “just sit with it.” After a while, some of the chitchat in my brain would disappear. My goal was to empty my mind of clutter, to reach a level in which my mind was still, calm and serene and I could see clearly. My brother taught me to respond to my thoughts rather than to react. But how could I respond to something upsetting in a graceful, calm and serene manner? How could I react without yielding my values, my ethics, my principles? How could I learn to accept rather than deny?
Like everything worth doing, it requires practice. And over time, it gets easier.
One of the things that appealed to me was the Four Noble Truths, the basics of Buddhism: Suffering. The cause of suffering. The cessation of suffering. The path that leads to the cessation of suffering. I wanted to understand how to follow that path.
Waldinger suggests setting intentions rather than goals. One intention is to be “fully alive and fully present for this precious, fleeting existence.” Others are being kinder, caring more about family and friends, trying to relieve the suffering of others, helping them feel good about themselves, paying attention to them. Those are the “north stars” he talks about.
After the election, Waldinger gave a dharma talk. He described how he went to bed early the night before so he wouldn’t have to find out the results of the election, then meditated for hours until he finally got up his courage. His feelings were rage, fear, disgust. He later wrote: “I find myself unsure of how to keep from falling into paralyzing despair in the face of everything that’s happening in our world. I notice myself wanting to indulge in exactly the feelings that are guaranteed to make things worse, what Buddhists call the three poisons — greed, anger and delusion, the root causes of suffering.” It’s a relief to know that even Buddhist priests have the same feelings as we do.
Meditation is guilt-free for me. Judgment-free. There are no real rules to the practice. You can think any thought as long as you want and feel real feelings without feeling shame. You can totally accept yourself as you try (and maybe fail) to accept others. What surprised me about the sangha is that it’s fun. There’s laughter and interesting conversations, and it’s not at all pious or mournful.
People are drawn to meditation to relieve suffering. Our instinct is to turn away from suffering, but it’s important to go toward what is painful in your life. No one gets a pass on suffering. The most important thing to understand is that the main cause of suffering is attachment, because with attachment goes loss. Impermanence also is a cause of suffering. Nothing stays the same, and change is frightening. “If you’re lucky, life won’t break your heart,” says Waldinger. The purpose of meditation is to “sit down, shut up and pay attention.”
It was only after the election that I had sort of an epiphany. I was calmly sitting there with my eyes closed when all of a sudden I thought, “Oh!” I felt awakened. I tried to explain this to Waldinger, but he said it was impossible to explain. Zen meditation, he says, “is experiential. It’s like sex. You can’t describe it.” My epiphany was a moment of clarity. “How do you capture it?” he asks. “It’s opaque to the mind, radiant to the heart. You don’t have to understand everything.”
I know that Zen meditation is a gradual process. It’s like working a muscle. I’m so happy I stuck with it. I find that I’m not as agitated by things that used to upset me. I feel more compassionate toward others. In the five stages of grief, I felt I had finally achieved acceptance.
And then Trump picked Kimberly Guilfoyle to be ambassador to my beloved Greece, where I spent the happiest years of my childhood.
I had a total relapse. It was back to denial for me.
It’s easy to feel discouraged about the persistent onslaught of difficulties in the world today, whether these be personal circumstances or social issues. Psychologists, some of whom have a close-up view of the suffering these difficulties inflict, may find it especially difficult to stay positive about the future. Yet a growing body of research suggests that if you want to cultivate positive change—in yourself, others, or society—restoring hope is a vital first step.
Start by understanding what hope is—and what it isn’t. Hope is sometimes equated with burying your head in the sand and ignoring reality or sitting idly by waiting for things to get better. In reality, hope is a more nuanced, cognitive process that involves well-known psychological concepts, such as goal-setting, agency, and cognitive restructuring.
“Hope isn’t a denial of what is, but a belief that the current situation is not all that can be,” said Thema Bryant, PhD, APA’s immediate past president. “You can recognize something’s wrong, but also that it’s not the end of the story.”
The science of hope
Beginning in the 1980s, the work of the late psychologist C. Rick Snyder, PhD, set the stage for much of today’s research about hope. Snyder defined hope as “the perceived capability to derive pathways to desired goals, and motivate oneself via agency thinking to use those pathways” (Psychological Inquiry, Vol. 13, No. 4, 2002). Snyder also published work on positive psychology, or the study of how people and communities can thrive.
Unlike optimism, which is simply the expectation of a better future, hope is action-oriented and a skill that can be learned. “We often use the word ‘hope’ in place of wishing, like you hope it rains today or you hope someone’s well,” said Chan Hellman, PhD, a professor of psychology and founding director of the Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma. “But wishing is passive toward a goal, and hope is about taking action toward it.”
At the crux of this action is identifying the steps to achieve a goal and working toward them. In one study of a hope-based therapy intervention, researchers had participants write down goals they hoped to meet, followed by several possible pathways toward that goal (Social Indicators Research, Vol. 77, 2006). “You identify where you are currently, and then you generate multiple ways to get there,” said Jennifer Cheavens, PhD, a professor of psychology at The Ohio State University in Columbus who developed this hope-focused intervention. After 8 weeks, participants reported more life meaning and self-esteem and fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety.
More recently, Cheavens and a former doctoral student, Jane Heiy, PhD, had primary-care patients with elevated symptoms of depression create goals to improve their symptoms. After 10 weeks, patients who defined pathways to improve their mental health were more likely to seek treatment and report less severe depression symptoms than those who participated in an enhanced referral system (doctoral dissertation, The Ohio State University, 2014).
Along with improving mental health and increasing self-esteem, studies suggest increasing hope can improve symptoms and daily functioning in those with chronic illness (Steffen, L. E., et al., Supportive Care in Cancer, Vol. 28, 2020). Other work has found hope to be a protective factor against posttraumatic stress disorder (Gallagher, M. W., et al., Journal of Clinical Psychology, Vol. 76, No. 3, 2020). Hellman sees hope as a mindset that promotes resilience in the face of difficulty. “If I have the perspective that something better is possible in the future, then I can better endure my struggles today,” he said.
Reaping the benefits of hope involves doing the work of reframing thoughts and forming new habits. But with a shift to your mindset and habits, you can begin to see and work toward the possibility of a better future—and equip others to do the same. Here’s what hope experts recommend:
Break goals into smaller chunks
If you’re taking your first steps toward hope, big goals might overwhelm you—and zap your ability to envision success. On the other hand, smaller goals allow more frequent achievements, which can highlight the possibility of progress and energize you toward a goal.
It’s important to keep pathways small and manageable. For people with depression and anxiety specifically, successfully taking small steps can in turn cultivate more hope and boost motivation to continue taking action. “As you realize it feels good to do something, you’re more likely to do it again,” said Shara Sand, PsyD, a clinical psychologist in New York City. “Engagement increases, and so does your sense of hope about the future.”
Matthew W. Gallagher, PhD, a professor of clinical and quantitative psychology at the University of Houston and editor of the Oxford Handbook of Hope, also recommends making goals specific and concrete. Hope is about embracing possibility, and it’s easier to maintain hope when you feel that your goals are achievable rather than lofty and distant.
Stay in community
Hope can occur in isolation, but it grows when you’re connected to a supportive and inspiring collective. A community of hopeful people can inspire you by encouraging you in your goals, helping you pivot when you encounter obstacles, or by simply reminding you that overcoming difficulty is possible.
“One benefit of being in a community when you’re trying to maintain hope is there are people who are living examples of what hope looks like when it’s achieved,” said Jacqueline Mattis, PhD, dean of faculty and a professor of psychology at Rutgers University–Newark. “When you’re falling, they’ll be there to reimagine with you what it means to stand.”
In her research of low-income youth, Mary Beth Medvide, PhD, an assistant professor of psychology at Suffolk University in Boston, found seeing other people succeed can be motivating—especially in the absence of other support, such as an encouraging family. For example, some adolescents reported feeling they could earn a college degree because their high schools hung banners listing where graduates were attending college.
If you feel powerless about systemic issues, such as racism or climate change, joining forces with a group of people who share your desire for change can increase your hope—and increase the likelihood of change. Collective hope, according to Hellman, involves combining energies to cast a shared vision of the future and identifying strategies to achieve goals. “Big societal issues can feel overwhelming because alone, we can’t move the needle,” he said. “But when we find others who share our story or experience, we collectively form a powerful voice and energy that can influence change.”
Prepare to pivot
When a designated pathway does not lead directly to a goal, you may feel discouraged, which can drain your motivation. Being primed to pivot can help maintain hope. “Try to see setbacks as new information about which strategies work and don’t work, and then modify your approach and goal so you maintain momentum toward what you’re trying to accomplish,” said Gallagher.
Reframing the outcome can help promote flexibility. For example, imagine that you applied for a specific research grant but didn’t get it. Instead of abandoning hope, try a new pathway toward the goal or redefine the end point according to the ultimate goal or the value behind it. Perhaps the grant was more of a pathway toward your goal than a goal itself, and there are other pathways that will work.
With that mindset, you could begin to focus on getting any grant that enables you to conduct your research and help more people. “Don’t be so wedded to specificity of outcome that you lose the big picture and can’t pivot,” said Mattis.
Along with the ability to reframe, this process requires creativity—another learnable skill. “Those who are willing to be open to possibilities can maintain their hope,” said Bryant. “Instead of ‘there is no path,’ you think, ‘I haven’t [yet] found the path that’s going to work.’”
Reflect on the past
Hope, by nature, is future focused. But reflecting on the past can also encourage hope down the road, especially if you feel your hopefulness wavering. “I’ll ask people to be their own ‘hope models’ by reflecting back on a time they achieved something really difficult in their lives, when they chose to take action and it made all the difference,” said Hellman.
This type of reflection can be especially helpful for those with depression, who may have a skewed perspective about their own growth. Kathryn Gordon, PhD, a clinical psychologist and author of The Suicidal Thoughts Workbook: CBT Skills to Reduce Emotional Pain, Increase Hope, and Prevent Suicide, developed a framework to restore hope in patients with suicidal ideation. Perspective is an essential ingredient. “I have them gather evidence that they’ve been able to get through difficult things in the past, which helps them identify tools they can use in their current situation,” she said.
If your past feels like a barrier, as is the case for many who have experienced trauma, reflection can help you maintain hope. Benjamin Hardy, PhD, an organizational psychologist and author of several books related to goal-setting and personal growth, recommends identifying ways you’ve changed over time—even from week to week—to promote a growth mindset. “How you frame your past can dictate what you expect for your future,” he said.
Celebrate wins
Counting successes along your journey toward a goal can help energize you to move forward. “When we achieve something, we often take it for granted because our minds go to the next thing we don’t have or haven’t done,” said Bryant. Take time to acknowledge—and celebrate—what you’ve accomplished in the present to support your hopeful mindset for the future.
Even honoring your tiny steps forward through a mindful gratitude practice makes a difference. Imagine your goal is to work at a particular university. You may not have that position today, but you may be doing similar work as you would in that job, whether mentoring students or conducting research. “Your wins may not be in the same context you’re hoping for, but it’s important to recognize that you’re already achieving some aspect of the goal that’s important to you,” said Mattis.
Tracking emotional intensity and noticing how feelings fluctuate can also promote hope, said Gordon, whether personally or for struggling patients or mentees. Even if a difficult emotion, such as sadness or anxiety, does not completely dissipate, tracking it is a reminder that it will not last forever, which can increase hope.
Recognize that you’re already practicing hope
Whether you recognize it or not, hope is inherent to a psychologist’s work because it is rooted in the belief that you can be part of positive change, whether your work focuses on therapy, research, teaching, or myriad other applications. For others, even simply showing up to therapy or a psychology course—whether as a psychologist, patient, or student—is a hopeful act, hinging on the belief that growth and change are possible. “Psychology is not only the study of what is, but the study and enactment of transformation and healing in both individuals and communities,” said Bryant.
GALLUP Student Poll National Cohort Fall 2012 USA Overall Data The Gallup Student Poll is a brief measure of hope, engagement, and wellbeing. The poll taps into the hearts and minds of American students to determine what drives wellbeing and achievement. Distribution and discussion of the Gallup Student Poll data will help create a more hopeful story about American youth and education, and will engage parents, teachers, and community leaders in social entrepreneurship.
Gallup research has shown about half of students are hopeful; these students possess numerous ideas and abundant energy for the future. The other half of students are stuck or discouraged, lacking the ideas and energy they need to navigate problems and reach goals. About six in 10 students are engaged; they are highly involved with and enthusiastic about school. The other four in 10 are either going through the motions at school or actively undermining the teaching and learning process. About two-thirds of students are thriving; they think about their present and future lives in positive terms, and they tend to be in good health and have strong social support. About one third of students are struggling or suffering.
Hope — the ideas and energy we have for the future. Hope drives attendance, credits earned, and GPA of high school students. Hope predicts GPA and retention in college, and hope scores are more robust predictors of college success than are high school GPA and SAT and ACT scores.
Engagement — the involvement in and enthusiasm for school. Engagement distinguishes between high-performing and low-performing schools.
Wellbeing — how we think about and experience our lives. Wellbeing tells us how our students are doing today and predicts their success in the future. High school freshmen with high wellbeing earn more credits with a higher GPA than peers with low wellbeing. On average, a student with high wellbeing earns 10% more credits and has a 2.9 GPA (out of 4.0), whereas a student with low wellbeing completes fewer credits and earns a 2.4 GPA.
Hope | GrandMean: 4.40 (out of 5) n=458638 YOUR NATION** Hopeful – 54% Stuck – 32% Discouraged – 14%
84% of students who strongly agree their school is committed to building strengths are engaged. Your school must have an n-size of at least 30 to receive Engagement Index data. Engagement by Grade values not shown when n < 10
Wellbeing | GrandMean: 8.56 (out of 10) n=479439* YOUR NATION** Thriving – 67% Struggling – 32% Suffering – 1%
65% of thriving students are engaged. Wellbeing by Grade values not shown when n < 10 – No data available * The wellbeing n size represents the total respondent population. Hope, engagement and wellbeing n sizes differ if students chose not to answer one or more hope or engagement items.
We have an increasingly divided country, polity, and society. While this strains our family dinners and creates anxiety on the left and right, one of the most notable results is the stark decline in the well-being and mental health of our youth. They are facing deep uncertainties about the future of jobs and labor markets, being able to afford college and the consequences of not having a degree, worsening climate change, declining communities, and toxic civic discourse.1 The youth mental health crisis in large part reflects a decline in hope that has resulted from these trends.
The deterioration in youth mental health first became evident in 2011.2 Today, our young adults ages 18 to 25 are the least happy demographic group, departing from a long-established U-shaped relationship between life satisfaction and age in many countries worldwide.3 The longstanding U-curve reflects the unhappiness and stress that most people experience in the midlife years as they juggle financial and family constraints (such as caring for both their children and their aging parents), while both the young and the old exhibit higher life satisfaction and lower stress, anxiety, and depression.4 But now, youth in the United States are faring worse than their stressed-out parents.
Our young are also unhappy compared to the young in many other countries, including those that are far less wealthy than the United States. These include Bulgaria, Ecuador, and Honduras.5 In 2024, US youth ranked 62nd in the world happiness rankings. Even more concerning, they also are experiencing an increase in anxiety, depression, and suicide.6
There is no magic solution for this crisis. Most suggested policies focus on better regulation of social media and increased access to mental health care. While both of these things are important, they will not address the deeper economic, climate, and civil discourse challenges that precipitated the well-being crisis. Social media and misinformation surely exacerbate the trends, but the root causes are deeper and broader.
The costs of not solving this crisis are high, not only for the youth who are suffering during what should be a very happy time in life, but also in terms of future earnings and productivity and our society’s health and life expectancy. In 2021, life expectancy for college-educated adults in the United States (who make up just one-third of our population) was eight and a half years longer than for adults without a bachelor’s degree—more than triple the gap in 1992.7 And today, many of the jobs available to those without a bachelor’s do not offer health insurance.
In addition, we have a more general crisis of “deaths of despair,”8 primarily driven by premature deaths due to suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol and other poisonings. Initially, these deaths were concentrated among middle-aged, blue-collar white people in communities suffering from declines in manufacturing, mining, and related industries; these industries typically anchored their communities, often serving as the main source of employment and supporting related civic organizations and local resources such as grocery stores, restaurants, and newspapers. Now, these deaths are spreading to a wider range of races and age groups, including Black people—who have long displayed resilience in the face of injustice and hardship— and teenagers. This crisis is of such magnitude that it has steadily driven down our national average life expectancy since 2015, with overdose deaths alone surpassing 100,000 per year in 2021 and 2022.9 The increasing participation of the young in these patterns suggests that our crisis of despair is becoming an intergenerational one.
The prospect of intergenerational transmission is disturbing, and there are signs of it throughout research my colleagues and I have conducted in low-income communities. For example, a survey of white youth in Missouri found that they have finished or want to finish high school and, at most, perhaps an additional year of technical education—but their parents do not support them in achieving higher levels of education. This reflects, among other things, a decline in the American narrative of individual effort being the key to success for the white working class.10 There is no longer a stable work-life narrative for those who do not acquire higher education or technical skills. This is especially concerning because the factors that underpin despair can make people more susceptible to extremist ideologies and create entire geographies that are prone to radicalization and violence. Poverty, unemployment, income inequality, and low education levels are all relevant factors in radicalization, extremism, and mass shootings.11
Restoring Hope
An important and underreported solution to the crisis lies in restoring hope. While hope resembles optimism—as individuals believe things will get better—an equally important part of hope (and not optimism) is that individuals can do things that improve their lives and thereby demonstrate agency over their futures. Helping the young form a vision of what their futures can look like will help them have hope and aspirations. This is crucial because, as my research has found, there are strong linkages between hope and long-term outcomes in education, health, and mental well-being, with hope more important to the outcomes of youth with limited access to education and mentorship.12
Psychiatrists often cite restoring hope as the first step to recovering from mental illness but offer very few prescriptions for doing so.13 A classic definition of hope—which entails aspirations, agency, and pathways to achieve goals—provides a good frame for thinking about how to restore hope, but lacks examples relevant to today’s youth.14 Yet today an increasing number of new programs aim to provide students with the agency and pathways to acquire the education they need to lead healthy and productive futures. One potential policy innovation that most people can agree on and that will help restore hope among the young is the development of new models of education that focus on the mix of technological and social-emotional skills students need to succeed in tomorrow’s labor force.
Education Innovations
Educational innovations are taking root across the country that focus on middle and high school students and on helping students who want a college education to achieve it. Community colleges and career and technical education (CTE) programs stand out, as they often bridge the gaps between the skills kids learn in high school and those that are needed to succeed in college and the workplace. CTE in particular provides a productive longer-term track for those who do not want or cannot afford to pursue a college education.
Starting as early as middle school, some programs focus on the social-emotional skills that students will need to succeed in rapidly changing labor markets, such as creativity, adaptability, and self-esteem, in addition to traditional technical skills. The #BeeWell program in Greater Manchester, a large county in the deindustrialized northeast of England, introduces these skills as an integral part of its student engagement process in over 160 schools.15 It includes strategies to combat loneliness, which is increasing among the young in both the United States and the United Kingdom and is often a precursor to depression.16 The program relies on the cooperation of families and communities and uses inputs from large-scale surveys of students. Surveys over three years showed modest improvements in student well-being, and demand for the program is increasing in and beyond Greater Manchester.17
Youthful Savings is a high school program founded in the United States that targets low-income students. The curriculum addresses basic economic principles, financial literacy, ethical entrepreneurship practices, and protecting mental well-being. Students who participate in the program tend to go on to a vocational school or four-year college. A key feature of the program, according to the four program leaders and participants I interviewed in June of 2024, is the active mentorship that the program leadership provides—that mentorship was a critical factor in the students’ decisions to go on to some form of post–high school education.18
Across the country, CTE programs are playing an increasingly important role in helping youth develop pathways to good jobs—and therefore restoring hope. In Massachusetts, for example, supporting CTE is a statewide initiative based on creating pathways to successful careers by fostering STEM skills for students of all income levels and backgrounds. Some of the programs are based in high schools and require that students spend part of their training time in local organizations, such as local engineering and building firms, among others. The state has also implemented higher reimbursement rates for high school building projects incorporating CTE programs. These efforts are aimed at modernizing and enhancing vocational and technical education opportunities for students throughout the state.19 And an innovative CTE program in Cleveland has high school students taking classes and engaged in workplace learning in a hospital as they explore healthcare careers—they can even graduate high school with state-tested nurse aide credentials.20 Similar high school–hospital partnerships are now expanding thanks to Bloomberg Philanthropies.21
Community colleges are also playing a critical role in helping low-income youth find fulfilling education and work opportunities. Macomb Community College (MCC), outside Detroit, has pioneered a model that allows students to take courses from participating state universities and complete four-year degrees while remaining on the community college campus. This avoids the expenses and time constraints introduced by moving and/or long commutes and is particularly important for older students who often must balance work and family obligations. Each student who comes to MCC is partnered with a mentor who advises them on their academic progress and steers them to mental health resources when needed. Approximately 65 percent of students who attend MCC complete four-year degrees, either on the campus or at state schools.22
Another aspect of the MCC model is the James Jacobs Legacy Series, which sponsors civic engagement activities and periodic lectures for the students and the community. Macomb County is diverse, with retired auto workers, a longstanding but traditionally discriminated against African American community, and new immigrants. The Legacy Series aims to increase civic engagement across the three populations and to expose students to new connections and networks that enhance their chances of living and working in Macomb post-graduation.
A related initiative inspired in part by the MCC model is underway at Lorain County Community College in Ohio. The college collaborates with employers and other regional partners to provide targeted curricula and paid internships, with the objective of setting up every student for success. Some programs at Lorain, such as one in microelectromechanical systems, have a 100 percent success rate in placing graduates in full-time jobs. This is because internships in local firms are a mandatory part of its curriculum, and that curriculum is frequently updated with employer input. The internships provide students with both hands-on experience and focused mentorship.23
On the demand side of the story, efforts to renovate regional economies and communities in the parts of the country that have suffered the most from the decline of manufacturing industries and employment largely hinge on having local colleges and universities. Higher education institutions provide not only relevant training for the labor force, but also the threshold of knowledge and civic engagement that is necessary for communities and small cities to attract and retain new industries and their workforces.24
Mentors and Mental Health
As noted above, a critical part of the success of efforts to restore hope and give youth new opportunities is the provision of mentorship. Mentors not only guide young adults in their goals of skill acquisition but also provide advice on how to deal with mental health and other issues that often arise during the transition from youth to adulthood. While stress and anxiety are not new for high school– and college-age youth, as the rising number of serious incidents shows, they have been severely exacerbated by the above-noted uncertainties about the future of job openings, education, climate change, political divisions, community declines, and even the nature of information itself. While these trends affect many of us, they are particularly challenging for young people trying to make decisions about how to aspire to and invest in better futures.
Insufficient access to mental health care is also a central issue, especially in the roughly 80 percent of rural counties that do not have a single psychiatrist.25 The role of peers and mentors is invaluable to encourage those who need it to seek necessary treatment. Peers can also help available—and new—providers identify vulnerable people and populations, as does the Visible Hands Collaborative in the environs of Pittsburgh and beyond.26 This is particularly important for young men; while they often are more reluctant than young women to seek out mental health care because of the continued stigma attached to it, they are showing increasing signs of distress, such as low college completion rates and high levels of labor force dropout.27
Given that most mental health conditions emerge during school years, efforts to expand detection and early intervention in schools are promising. Efforts in Massachusetts and Texas that focused on urgent access have shown potential for rapid scaling.28 And several organizations are collaborating to establish a new “theory of change” in this area by involving trusted community members—ranging from hairdressers to school teachers—to assess the risk of mental health disorders in communities.29 It is worth a note of caution, though, that projects that seek scale and widespread coverage at low cost are more effective at treating the average case than dealing with complex or more serious mental health issues. That said, given that mental health is increasingly considered a societal challenge on a much larger scale than in the past (and certainly than before the COVID-19 pandemic), it is worth exploring strategies that can reach more people—particularly those who previously have not had access—in new ways. This could help catch the problem in its early stages rather than wait until more extensive and medically intense treatment is necessary.
Providing youth with the skills and support they need to navigate the uncertainties in the economic, social, and other facets of their lives is an important step forward in addressing the crisis of youth mental health. By helping young people facing decisive junctures in their lives gain agency, skills, and connections through education, the initiatives described above show that restoring hope and taking on mental health issues during these very uncertain times is indeed possible.
Even though these programs—and others nationwide—are gaining momentum, we must generate a broad base of public support for them so that they do not operate in silos or only in “supportive” states and counties. This will require broad consensus and the cooperation of both public and private sectors. Without it, we are unlikely to make progress on solving the crisis that threatens the future of our country’s young and their ability to even conceive of pursuing the American dream. Especially now, in the early days of understanding how our political, economic, and social divisions are impacting our youth, we must have hope. Our shared concerns for our children and our country give us common ground—that alone gives me hope that we can resolve our differences enough to reimagine the opportunities we offer our youth.
Carol Graham is a senior fellow in the Economic Studies program at Brookings, a College Park Professor at the University of Maryland, and a senior scientist at Gallup. She received Pioneer Awards from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2017 and 2021 and a Lifetime Distinguished Scholar award from the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies in 2018. The author of numerous articles and books, her most recent book is The Power of Hope: How the Science of Well-Being Can Save Us from Despair.
2. D. Blanchflower, A. Bryson, and X. Xu, “The Declining Mental Health of the Young and the Global Disappearance of the Hump Shape in Age in Unhappiness,” NBER Working Paper No. 32337, National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2024, nber.org/papers/w32337.
4. D. Blanchflower and C. Graham, “The Mid-Life Dip in Well-Being: A Critique,” Social Indicators Research 161 (October 2022): 287–344.
5. J. Helliwell et al., World Happiness Report 2024 (Oxford, UK: Wellbeing Research Centre, University of Oxford, 2024), worldhappiness.report/ed/2024.
6. D. Stone, K. Mack, and J. Qualters, “Notes from the Field: Recent Changes in Suicide Rates, by Race and Ethnicity and Age Group—United States, 2021,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 72, no. 6 (February 10, 2023): 160–62); and A. Xiang et al., “Depression and Anxiety Among US Children and Young Adults,” JAMA Network Open 7, no. 10 (2024): e2436906.
10. C. Graham, The Power of Hope: How the Science of Well-Being Can Save Us from Despair (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2023).
11. J. Piazza, “The Determinants of Domestic Right-Wing Terrorism in the USA: Economic Grievance, Societal Change and Political Resentment,” Conflict Management and Peace Science 34, no. 1 (2017): 52–80; and R. Medina et al., “Geographies of Organized Hate in America: A Regional Analysis,” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 108, no. 4 (2018).
12. Graham, The Power of Hope; and C. Graham, “Hope and Despair: Implications for Life Outcomes and Policy,” Behavioral Science and Policy 9, no. 2 (January 10, 2024): 47–52.
13. B. Schrank et al., “Hope in Psychiatry,” Advances in Psychiatric Treatment 17, no. 3 (2011): 227–35.
14. C. Snyder, ed., The Handbook of Hope: Theory, Measures, and Applications (North Holland: Elsevier Science and Technology, 2000).
18. Youthful Savings, “Making Change Through Socioeconomic Empowerment,” youthfulsavings.com.
19. M. Sousa, “The Shaping of CTE in Massachusetts and Beyond,” American Educator 48, no. 1 (Spring 2024): 31–36.
20. P. Hummer, “Creating a Healthy Community: How a High School in a Hospital Launches Careers and Enhances Well-Being,” American Educator 48, no. 1 (Spring 2024): 26–30.
21. R. Weingarten, “Where We Stand: Transforming Education,” American Educator 48, no. 1 (Spring 2024): 1; and V. Myers, “Public-Private Partnership Fuels New Career Academy,” AFT, June 11, 2024, aft.org/news/public-private-partnership-fuels-new-career-academy.
24. R. Maxim and M. Muro, “Supporting Distressed Communities by Strengthening Regional Public Universities: A Federal Policy Proposal,” Brookings,July 29, 2021; and R. Florida, Cities and the Creative Class (New York: Routledge, 2005).
27. C. Graham and S. Pinto, “The Geography of Desperation in America: Labor Force Participation, Mobility, Place, and Well-Being,” Social Science and Medicine 270 (2021): 113612.
28. R. Kessler et al., “Lifetime Prevalence and Age-of-Onset Distributions of DSM-IV Disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication,” Archives of General Psychiatry 62, no. 6 (2005): 593–602; Meadows Mental Health Policy Institute, Mental and Behavioral Health Roadmap and Toolkit for Schools (Dallas: November 1, 2018), mmhpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/RoadmapAndToolkitForSchools.pdf; D. Mauch and E. Ressa, Report on Pediatric Behavioral Health Urgent Care (Boston: Children’s Mental Health Campaign, January 2019), childrensmentalhealthcampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/Pediatric-Behavioral-Health-Urgent-Care-2nd-Ed._0.pdf; and Texas Child Mental Health Care Consortium, “Texas Child Health Access Through Telemedicine (TCHATT),” University of Texas System, tcmhcc.utsystem.edu/tchatt.
29. To learn more, see Well Being Trust, “Native American Mental Health Resources,” wellbeingtrust.org.
[Illustrations by Taylor Callery]American Educator, Winter 2024-2025
Hopeful students are more successful in school, and educators can employ strategies to boost hopefulness in their students.
My son and I do lots of nexting on our morning walks to his elementary school. We talk about his next big project at school, his next basketball game, the next movie we’ll watch. Nexting thinking and talking about a desired future comes naturally to kids. I have never met a child who couldn’t do it.
If all children are capable of nexting, which requires thinking about the future in a fairly complex way, then why are only half of American children hopeful, according to the Gallup Student Poll? Why does only one of every two children believe their future will be better than their present and believe that they have the power to make that future a reality?
We can answer these questions by focusing on the harsh realities of our modern world that we can do little about. Or, we can exercise our own hope as educators to teach children how to hope. That starts with a common understanding of what hope is and is not, why it is important, and how it works.
Hopeful thinking combines future thinking with a sense of agency or efficacy.
Three myths about future thinking
Hopeful thinking combines future thinking with a sense of agency or efficacy. While most teachers know the value of building personal efficacy, future thinking’s role in student learning and development is not well understood. This may be due to our assumptions about daydreaming, motivation, and hope itself.
Daydreaming is bad for students.
Thinking about the future is something children do naturally. When their minds wander they might reflect on the past or examine the present, but most of the time they’re daydreaming about the future.
While teachers may interpret students’ dreamy gazes as off-task behavior, they may be considering something inspired by the teacher, a peer’s comment about a lesson, or a deep thought about how what they just learned in class relates to some other knowledge.
Daydreaming gives a child a chance to take a future for a test drive. It is where imagination sparks creativity and where plans and designs for the future are developed.
All goals are created equal.
Through daydreaming, students entertain aims beyond school. With the help of others, students begin to sort through the images of the future, or goals, and decide where they want to devote their time and energy.
Not all goals are created equal. The most motivating student goals are the ones they own and find personally meaningful. What’s salient to young people are the same goals that captivate most adults. Specifically, they want a good job. The image of having a good job pulls people through the years required to finish high school and undergraduate education. And they want that good job to provide security for the second outcome they’re pursuing: a happy family. Although ideas about what a happy family looks like differ vastly from person to person, all covet an image of a group of people coexisting and helping one another in daily life. These goals — the good job and happy family — help young people overcome the rigors of high school and college. These expectations, the foundations of a good life, are what draw students forward. Their goals motivate them.
Wishing is the same as hoping.
Future thinking that is rich with imagery is a core ingredient of both hoping and wishing. If a child is thinking about a desirable outcome, she may be hopeful. Then again, she may be just wishing.
Both future visions are immediately self-reinforcing — priming the pleasure pump with thoughts about accomplishment and celebration. Both can also help individuals relax and buffer themselves against stress, anxiety, and other negative emotions.
The difference is that hopes are sustainable; wishes are not. Wishes are mental fast food. They are mind candy that satisfies for the moment, but do nothing to nourish us for the long haul. Distinguishing a wish from a hope is not always easy. The telltale sign of a wish is that its benefits are fleeting. Wishing is future thinking that sparks no action. Only hope starts an individual thinking about ways to make life better and gets them moving.
Why hope is important
More than 50 studies have examined the role of hope in predicting the performance of elementary, middle school, high school, and college students. In each, hope predicted test scores and term GPA. In many studies, hope was a significant predictor of student success even when controlling for previous grades, intelligence, and other psychological variables (like engagement, optimism, and self-efficacy). The takeaway from all the studies is that, other conditions being equal, hope leads to a 12% bump in school outcomes.
While a great deal of research has been done with K-12 students, the most compelling evidence for the added value of hope comes from four longitudinal studies of college students. These long-term studies give us the opportunity to assess how the passage of time influences the link between hope and academic success.
Having hope leads to a 12% bump in school outcomes.
For the longitudinal studies, researchers recruited first-semester college students to complete a standardized measure of hope along with other scales, and requested access to their personal school records for some years to come. Researchers then unobtrusively followed the students by examining academic records each term or so. Statistical models were used to determine the relationship between hope and outcomes such as GPA, ongoing enrollment, and graduation. Each study controlled for the other determinants of school success, such as GPA at previous academic levels and entrance exam scores. The main finding is clear: How students think about the future predicts benchmarks of academic progress and success, including how many courses they enroll in, how many credits they earn, their GPA across those courses, their cumulative GPA, and the likelihood that they’ll graduate. Of note, one study showed that low-hope students are three times more likely to be dismissed from school for poor grades. Another study, which pitted hope against ACT scores, found that hope is a better predictor of ongoing enrollment and graduation than this standardized entrance exam.
Three things hopeful students do differently
Drawing upon my research and findings from studies around the world, I found that hopeful students have at least three characteristics that make them more successful than other students.
Hopeful students are excited about the future.
Children need something to hope for. They need to be excited about one thing in the future . . . then another, then another. That one thing can be big or small, novel or run-of-the-mill, close at hand or far in the future — as long as it teaches them to look forward with positive expectation. The content hardly matters (a weekly visit to the park, a family trip, a sporting event, a school dance) as long as thoughts about it are energizing to the young person.
Hopeful students create and sustain enthusiasm about their future lives. They talk with excitement about their future selves. With vivid descriptions of the goals they want to accomplish as they grow older, they become better at marshaling and aiming their resources so they can make progress. They become more animated and this display of positive emotions attracts attention and support from people who can help them along the way.
Hopeful students go to school.
Absenteeism is one of the biggest problems facing American schools. Researchers refer to missing lots of school as a canary in the coal mine, an early indicator that students will struggle academically and possibly drop out. The data show that by 3rd grade, children who missed too much of kindergarten and 1st grade are falling behind in reading. By 6th grade, chronic absence increases the likelihood that students will drop out of high school.
Unexcused absences spike when students enter high school, have more freedom, and start to make up their own minds about the value of school in general and of certain subjects in particular. Mike Wortman, the longtime principal of Lincoln High School in Lincoln, Neb., confirmed that missing school in the freshman year is one of his best predictors that a student will drop out. That’s why my Gallup colleagues and I took a close look at the school-going behavior of a large group of Principal Wortman’s freshmen. We measured the hope of students as they entered 9th grade then we followed them, collecting attendance data periodically. Students with high hope missed only two days of school during their first school term; low-hope students missed more than twice as many.
Hopeful students are engaged at school.
When students are engaged at school, they are psychologically invested in what is happening around them. They are active participants in the learning process, eager to gain and apply new knowledge and skills.
Most hopeful students are engaged at school. According to the Gallup Student Poll, nearly three of four students who are hopeful about the future are also involved in and enthusiastic about school. These two student states, hope and engagement, seem to work together to help students achieve daily and long-term goals.
How hope works
Hope is not simply an attitude or belief that benefits us in some mysterious way. Hope can lift our spirits, buoy our energy, and make life seem worth living. But it also changes our day-to-day behavior. How we think about the future has a direct influence on what we do today. This is nicely illustrated in a psychology experiment designed by two educational researchers, Mesmin Destin and Daphna Oyserman, who examined the link between students’ future thinking and their behavioral choices.
To prime two groups of 7th-grade science students in Detroit — 295 students in all — to think about the future, the researchers sent a counselor (actually a research assistant pretending to be an academic recruiter) from the University of Michigan to the middle school to talk about college and careers. He spoke to two groups (to which classes of students were assigned randomly) and presented a slide show about the university, the campus, and college majors. The second part of the talk featured real-world data about adult earnings. One group saw a graph describing the step-wise increase in salary by level of education in Michigan. The second group saw a graph summarizing the earnings of actors, athletes, and musicians on the 2008 Forbes Celebrity 100 list.
Once the classroom presentations were over, the science teachers (who had not attended and hence were considered “blind” to the experiment) gave students an extra-credit homework assignment related to information covered in their regular science class.
The students in the first group, who were shown an explicit link between education and income, were nearly eight times more likely than the second group to complete and turn in the optional assignment the next day. Eight times. It’s as if they suddenly saw education as a real path to the good future they wanted. Knowing the way to a solid job that paid $50,000 a year gave these 12- and 13-year-olds more energy and guidance for current effort than all the fantasy fortunes of Jay-Z, LeBron James, and other icons they followed on TV.
When students see a direct connection between the future they want and their attitudes and behaviors today, their commitment and effort soar.
Talking with Destin helped me realize that there is a distinction between thinking that you’re college-bound (an idea that we now drum into kids) and realizing that your success in life depends on how well you do in school today. When students see a direct connection between the future they want and their attitudes and behaviors today, their commitment and effort soar. They psychologically invest in the future, and it pays off today. That is the how of hope.
Three ways to make hope happen
In Making Hope Happen, I describe dozens of strategies designed to enhance hope. Here are three practical ways to help students discover and shape their future selves.
Ask students to work on goals that really matter to them.
Have you ever washed a rental car? Most people say that they have never done so and would never do so. Why? They don’t own the car, so they don’t feel responsible for it.
Most students don’t give their all on assignments they don’t own or find meaningful. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, since we, the adults, don’t like it when someone assigns us a task, either. No middle school student wakes up squealing with glee, “I get to raise the school district’s reading scores today!” No college student in America jumps out of bed and says, “Today, I will do my part to raise the graduation rate at my school!” They don’t care about institutional goals. They’re excited about personal goals that create a promising future for themselves. Educators’ work is to do all they can to make sure that the present prepares them for it.
Goals that are clearly linked to one day having a good job or a happy family inspire students to do their best. Knowing students well enough to know their visions of their future selves is required to sufficiently motivate them.
Teach students “where there’s a way, there’s will.”
Students generally are confident and think “I can do anything!” According to a 2003 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, American kids are No. 1 in the world in confidence. For the most part, students have adequate will and say they are determined to put in the hard work to pursue a future they’re excited about.
The big problem is that they lack the ways or necessary strategies to reach the big goals such as graduation and employment. According to the Gallup Student Poll, more than 90% strongly believe they would graduate from high school, but only 60% of them strongly believe they could come up with many ways to get good grades. Nearly half of American students strongly believe they would find a good job after graduation, but only a third of them strongly believe they could find ways around any problem that might arise in life.
My all-time favorite way to teach the ways of hope is to do it on the sly before people realize I’m 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 5th and 6th graders, 36 in all, disposable cameras and a week to document hope in their lives. She enticed them into action by promising to display their work at a community art show for their friends, family, educators, and other community members.
Magnuson-Stessman 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 captured images of hope in their daily lives in 28 photos. In consultation with Magnuson-Stessman, they picked one photo that best represented hope to them. Next, they wrote a brief essay, to be edited and reedited with her to tell their story. Finally, the students printed the photos, cropped them, matted and framed them, hung them along with their essay, then rehearsed for the art show.
Magnuson-Stessman 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, Alli, and I attended the unveiling with about 100 school officials, students, and family members who sampled apple juice in wine glasses with fresh strawberries and cubed cheese. As Alli and I viewed the photos, read the essays, and chatted with 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 remember fondly today.
The Hope Camera Project 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.
Show students how to set action triggers.
A when/where plan uses the power of cues to prompt us to work on the long-term projects that matter most to us. A good when/where plan keeps us on track, guards us against our tendency to procrastinate, and prevents us from getting overwhelmed by competing demands.
New York University psychology professor Peter Gollwitzer has developed this strategy through a series of research studies, most notably through two I’ll call the Christmas Studies. In Christmas Study #1, college students were asked before Christmas break to name two projects, one easy and one hard, that they intended to complete during their time off. Typical goals included writing papers, mending relationships with friends, and exercising. About two-thirds of them, with no encouragement, formed plans about when and where to get started on the project. Upon returning from Christmas vacation, participants were asked about project completion. Most of the easy projects were completed regardless of whether the student had made a when/where plan. But hard projects were a different story. Only 25% of students who did not develop when/where plans in advance completed their hard projects.
In Christmas Study #2, all participants were given the same project: They were to write a report on how they spent Christmas Eve and submit it within two days of returning from the holiday. Individuals were then randomly assigned to two groups. One group was asked to create when/where plans for writing the essay; the other was not. Seventy-five percent of the group who had visited the future to specify the time and place for writing the report submitted it on time; only 33% of those without a plan completed the project.
Making a when/where plan is a straightforward process. Each time, give a student an assignment or set a goal, help them choose the day and time they’ll start working on it, and the place where they’ll work.
Spreading hope to students
Most students can go from nexting to hope with a little help from teachers and other caregivers. Not only can we teach them how to hope, but we also can inspire it in them. That’s because hope is contagious. It can be spread from one person to another. In a classroom setting, all that is required to create a contagion is a teacher being at the height of hope.
Citation: Lopez, S.J. (2013). Making hope happen in the classroom. Phi Delta Kappan, 95 (2), 19-22.
SHANE J. LOPEZ is a senior scientist at Gallup, Omaha, Neb. Portions of this article were adapted from his new book, Making Hope Happen: Create the Future You Want for Yourself and Others . Learn more at makinghopehappenow.com.
Baltimore City students showed significant gains, though scores remain low
Maryland public schools remain stubbornly middle-of-the-pack on a national test, even as achievement inches upward.
The state’s fourth graders performed better than two years ago on reading and math, according to scores released Wednesday by the National Assessment of Educational Progress,a test required by Congress to be given every two years to a random sample of students in every state. There were also some hopeful signs in Baltimore, which saw significant gains in fourth grade math.
Maryland’s national ranking on the test rose in fourth grade reading from 40th to 20th, a highlight of the otherwise modest changes in the rankings, according to state school board president Josh Michael, who is also executive director of the Sherman Family Foundation, a financial supporter of The Banner.
“Where we have focused the most, we have seen the most progress in state rankings,” he said, adding that elementary students are making greater gains than eighth graders. “The investments in public education through the Blueprint are beginning to pay off.”
Despite that progress, the state’s scores mirror national trends showing student achievement declining in the past decade, wiping away the educational gains that were made in the early 2000s. The declines began in about 2015 and 2017, long before the pandemic.
Across the nation, “the news is not good,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the test, called the Nation’s Report Card. “We’re not seeing the progress we need to regain the ground our students lost during the pandemic, and where we are seeing signs of recovery, they’re mostly in math and largely driven by higher-performing students.
The most discouraging news for Maryland came in the state’s eighth grade scores. Only a quarter of the state’s eighth graders can pass the math test, and Maryland’s scores were lower than 27 other states.
In fourth grade, on the other hand, the state saw improvement. Thirty-seven percent passed the math test, up six percentage points. Maryland officials on Tuesday unveiled a plan to overhaul how the subject is taught in hopes of boosting achievement.
Hidden in the data, Carr said, is that the lowest-performing students in the country appear to be losing ground in reading. That does not appear to be the case in Maryland where the percentage of lowest-performing students remains constant.
The reasons for the stagnation are unclear, but Carr noted that surveys of students taken at the time of the tests show that they are not spending as much time reading for pleasure, that more reading is migrating to screens rather than paper, and that the lowest-performing students are those who are missing the most school. Her advice to parents: Send your children to school.
During the pandemic, chronic absences increased dramatically, although those numbers have been coming back to more normal levels, particularly in Baltimore.
City students nearly matched the statewide gains. Baltimore fourth graders’ scores rose by five percentage points to 12%, though the math scores are still some of the lowest in the country. City students performed better in eighth grade math than those in Detroit and about the same as those in Cleveland, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, but behind dozens of other cities.
City schools officials said their investments in improving the curriculum and teaching materials have played a role in increasing scores, but so has training for teachers, and the addition of school-based coaches for math teachers. The city also held evenings when families could learn how to teach math to their children.
The city’s scores showed particularly large increases for economically disadvantaged students, who increased their fourth grade math scores by 10 percentage points, and African American students, who increased scores by 8 percentage points.
Maryland embarked on a goal of turning around scores on the national test as it launched its major investment in education spending several years ago. The state is expected to spend about $4 billion more per year on education by 2029. State education leaders said they wanted to return the state to being known as having the best public schools in the nation.
The scores released Wednesday show only modest increases in math.
About the Education Hub
This reporting is part of The Banner’s Education Hub, community-funded journalism that provides parents with resources they need to make decisions about how their children learn. Read more.
WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s children have continued to lose ground on reading skills in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and have made little improvement in math, according to the latest results of an exam known as the nation’s report card.
The findings are yet another setback for U.S. schools and reflect the myriad challenges that have upended education, from pandemic school closures to a youth mental health crisis and high rates of chronic absenteeism. The national exam results also show growing inequality: While the highest-performing students have started to regain lost ground, lower-performing students are falling further behind.
Given every two years to a sample of America’s children, the National Assessment of Educational Progress is considered one of the best gauges of the academic progress of the U.S. school system. The most recent exam was administered in early 2024 in every state, testing fourth- and eighth-grade students on math and reading.
“The news is not good,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees the assessment. “We are not seeing the progress we need to regain the ground our students lost during the pandemic.”
Among the few bright spots was an improvement in fourth grade math, where the average score ticked up 2 points on a scale of 500. It’s still 3 points lower than the 2019 pre-pandemic average, yet some states and districts made significant strides, including in Washington, D.C., where the average score increased 10 points.
For the most part, however, American schools have not yet begun to make progress.
Growing numbers of students lack basic reading skills
The average math score for eighth grade students was unchanged from 2022, while reading scores fell 2 points at both grade levels. One-third of eighth grade students scored below “basic” in reading, more than ever in the history of the assessment.
Students are considered below basic if they are missing fundamental skills. For example, eighth grade students who scored below basic in reading were typically unable to make a simple inference about a character’s motivation after reading a short story, and some were unable to identify that the word “industrious” means “to be hard working.”
Especially alarming to officials was the divide between higher- and lower-performing students, which has grown wider than ever. Students with the highest scores outperformed their peers from two years ago, making up some ground lost during the pandemic. But the lowest performers are scoring even lower, falling further behind.
It was most pronounced in eighth grade math: While the top 10% of students saw their scores increased by 3 points, the lowest 10% decreased by 6 points.
“We are deeply concerned about our low-performing students,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, which sets policies for the exam. “For a decade, these students have been on the decline. They need our urgent attention and our best effort.”
The drop in scores continues a post-pandemic slide
The latest setbacks follow a historic backslide in 2022. In that year’s exam, student achievement fell across both subjects and grade levels, in some cases by unprecedented levels.
This round of testing again featured students whose lives were disrupted by the pandemic. When COVID hit in 2020, the fourth graders were in kindergarten, and the eighth graders were in fourth grade.
But Carr said poor results can no longer be blamed solely on the pandemic, warning that the nation’s education system faces “complex challenges.”
A survey done alongside the exam found in 2022 that fewer young students were reading for enjoyment, which is linked to lower reading scores. And new survey results found that students who are often absent from class — a persistent problem nationwide — are struggling the most.
“The data are clear,” Carr said. “Students who don’t come to school are not improving.”
The results provide fresh fuel for a national debate over the impact of pandemic school closures, though they’re unlikely to add clarity. Some studies have found that longer closures led to bigger academic setbacks. Those slower to reopen were often in urban and Democratic-led areas, while more rural and Republican-led areas were quicker.
The new results don’t show a “direct link” on the topic, Carr said, though she said students clearly do better when they’re in school.
Among the states that saw reading scores fall in 2024 are Florida and Arizona, which were among the first to return to the classroom during the pandemic. Meanwhile, some big school systems that had longer closures made strides in fourth grade math, including Los Angeles and New York City.
The success of big urban districts — 14 of which saw notable improvement in fourth-grade math when the nation as a whole saw only minor gains — can be credited to academic recovery efforts funded by federal pandemic relief, said Ray Hart, executive director of the Council of Great City Schools. Investing in efforts like intensive tutoring programs and curriculum updates is “really proving to make a difference,” he said.
Republican lawmakers cast blame on Biden administration
The U.S. Education Department said the results are “heartbreaking” and reflect an education system that is failing students despite billions of dollars in annual funding and more than $190 billion in federal pandemic relief.
“The Trump Administration is committed to reorienting our education system to fully empower states, to prioritize meaningful learning, and provide universal access to high-quality instruction,” the department said in a statement. “Change must happen, and it must happen now.”
Republicans in Congress were quick to cast blame on former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Mich., chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, said the decline is “clearly a reflection of the education bureaucracy continuing to focus on woke policies rather than helping students learn and grow.”
“I’m thankful we have an administration that is looking to reverse course,” he said in a reference to President Donald Trump.
Compared with 2019 results, eighth grade reading scores are now down 8 points. Reading scores are down 5 points in both grades. And in fourth grade math, scores are down 3 points.
Yet officials say there’s reason to be optimistic. Carr highlighted improvement in Louisiana, where fourth grade reading is now back above pre-pandemic levels, and in Alabama, which accomplished that feat in fourth grade math.
Carr was especially laudatory of Louisiana, where a campaign to improve reading proficiency resulted in both higher- and lower-performing students exceeding 2019 scores.
She drew attention to the state’s focus on the science of reading — a research-backed approach that focuses on teaching phonics, or the building blocks of words, as children build toward literacy. The concept has been embraced by a growing number of blue and red states and has been credited for gains in some states.
“I would not say that hope is lost, and I would not say that we cannot turn this around,” Carr said. “It’s been demonstrated that we can.”
Annie Ma contributed reporting from Washington, and Sharon Lurye contributed from New Orleans.
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