Giving Thanks; Pursuing Hope

This morning, Opal School gathered for its annual Gratitude Ceremony.  Each class demonstrated its unique response to the invitation to contribute: one composed poems about the ways in which it was thankful for Opal School; another wrote a book of feelings and published a copy for each classroom; a third made a “brightness machine, useful on miserable days.”

Children in Opal 3, the third-grade class, shared their reflections on hope, listed below:

In Opal 3, we were thinking about hope. We cracked open the word hope to see what lives inside.

Hope is what we live on.

Hope is what we want to do and what we love to do.

Hope is what you want to achieve.

Hope can be your dreams.

This is how big your heart becomes when you have hope.

We read poems and quotations about hope and we want to share some with you.

Hope never stops. One hope can multiply into thousands.

This made us think of our work with growth mindsets because with a growth mindset you can always get better.

I was inspired by the idea that we can strive to become better and then everything around us will become better too.

And it takes love to make us better.

This one connects hope and action. It says don’t wait for good things to happen to you. The action is that you go out and make good things happen! Like you’re helping everyone else. This is like a chain reaction. When someone gives hope to someone else, that person can give hope to another person and hope spreads and spreads and spreads.

This one connects to hope because if you lose hope then your dreams can die. But we hope you will all be full of hope.

I think it all starts on a planet where the biggest ideas are born. They break down into hope and everybody can know them and have hope.

In times of great turmoil, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the massive task at hand.  The crisis demands, though, that we overcome that hurdle and work for justice.  Children are our greatest allies and inspiration in that work: they can teach us to hope.

What ideas and texts are you exploring with the children you work with?  How are you finding hope and inspiration?