Our Hopes and Dreams for School
Asking students to articulate their hopes for the year
"What are your hopes for this school year?"
Many teachers using the Responsive Classroom approach ask students this question at the start of every school year.
While the question may seem simple, posing it to students and asking them to share their responses can have a profound effect on the classroom. Just think about the messages inherent in the question: what you care about matters at school; your hopes and goals are taken seriously; you have a say in what we'll learn.
Taking the time to help children articulate their hopes for school—or their "hopes and dreams," as they’re often called—sets a tone of collaboration and mutual respect. It fosters reflection and self-knowledge by prompting children to ask themselves questions such as "What’s important to me at school? What do I want to learn more about? What’s easy for me? What’s hard for me? What do I want to get better at?"
Sharing hopes and dreams also creates a meaningful context for establishing classroom rules. Once hopes have been articulated, discussions can begin about what rules will be needed to help everyone’s hopes and dreams come true.
In older grades, the teacher might ask, "If these are our hopes, what rules will we need in order to make these hopes come true?" In younger grades, "How can we take care of ourselves and each other so that we can all do what we hope to do in school?" In this way, rules become logical outgrowths of the students’ and teachers’ goals rather than directives handed down from above.
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