Writing Hope Strategies for Writing Success in Secondary Schools

Advocating for the Affective: Writing Hope into School Spaces

“…Though hope has been defined in a variety of ways across educational contexts, my research over the past seven years with secondary and postsecondary school students (and their teachers) has examined the development of writing skills through a hope theory that is defined in positive psychology as the will (motivation) and the ways (strategies) to accomplish future goals (Snyder, 2000). By conducting interviews, focus groups, classroom observations, surveys, and artifact analyses situated within English classrooms at the middle school, high school, and college levels, I have found that hope plays a significant role in building students' writing capabilities and positive affects towards writing and reading (Sieben, 2013(Sieben, , 2018. By examining my own teaching practices and interviewing secondary school ELA teachers who have engaged with this work over time, I have gained valuable insight about the role hope-focused strategies can play in ELA classrooms.…”

“…Since general hope is the will (the affect) and the ways (the strategies knowledge) to accomplish worthwhile goals (Snyder, 2000), writing hope is the emotional motivation (the will) to use writing strategies (the ways) to accomplish worthwhile writing goals set by students (with guidance from teachers and other writing mentors). Through both the quantitative statistical analyses and qualitative case studies in English language arts classrooms, writing hope has emerged as a valid, strengths-based approach to teaching both hope and writing as it builds writing motivations and competencies in secondary school (and college) students (Sieben, 2013(Sieben, , 2016(Sieben, , 2018. This framework of writing hope has been helpful in my teaching of writing skills to students because it considers cognitive-motivational components to success, and LAJM, Spring 2018 21 it allows for the affective component of the writer to influence the teaching and learning of writing processes for school and for life (Sieben, 2018).…”

“…Through both the quantitative statistical analyses and qualitative case studies in English language arts classrooms, writing hope has emerged as a valid, strengths-based approach to teaching both hope and writing as it builds writing motivations and competencies in secondary school (and college) students (Sieben, 2013(Sieben, , 2016(Sieben, , 2018. This framework of writing hope has been helpful in my teaching of writing skills to students because it considers cognitive-motivational components to success, and LAJM, Spring 2018 21 it allows for the affective component of the writer to influence the teaching and learning of writing processes for school and for life (Sieben, 2018). At the intersection of positive psychology and English education, writing hope as a theory and an educational framework shows us that in places where emotional motivation is present, authenticity and competency in writing is more likely to follow.…”

“…Since positive psychologists have found that emotion does much of the work in building hope in students across multiple domains of life (Lopez, 2013;Snyder, 2000), as teachers we can work with students to access these emotions and motivate strategy use that will help students to reach meaningful, self-determined goals inside and outside of the classroom. While hope can help improve writing and reading competencies, it can also do something perhaps even more important for our students: it can build hope into their lives where it may be lacking (Sieben, 2018). It can help our students to imagine scenarios in which they could feel happy or fulfilled, when perhaps they are not, and with support, students can write their ideas into existence.…”

“…By writing with their feelings, and not apart from them, students can develop writing skills necessary for academic competencies and for survival in grief and other moments in life that trigger difficult emotions (LaMay, 2016). In accordance with research that supports the use of structured writing experiences to cope with loss, disappointment, heartbreak, and/ or fear (Neimeyer, 1999); certain guidelines for writing and discussion could be created and followed within a supportive framework-like the Writing Hope Framework (Sieben, 2018) or a vicarious learning experiences framework (Bandura, 1986)-in order for students to process emotions in ways that can help them to reconstruct meaning and foster hope for the future.…”