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Through the Making Hope Happen cohort, technology is used to help students reach goals. The cohort has designed a 5-week program and a web site to increase hopeful thinking in children using didactics, narrative techniques and games. The technique is called Hope TALK, which stands for Teaching the hope model, Applying the language, Luring kids into the use of terms, and Kindling a hopeful spirit.
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"We wanted to develop the technology skills necessary to disseminate information about hope to a broad group of folks...We wanted to take everything from the world of psychology that we know about hope and all the interventions we do in schools and boil all of that down to make it more accessible," said Shane Lopez, faculty leader of the Making Hope Happen cohort. "The web is the best way to share that."
The cohort achieved this goal through the web site www.makinghopehappen.com. Cohort members included a school psychologist, a schoolteacher, a school administrator and a counseling psychologist. The site features three distinct sections that are united by Hope TALK, which stands for Teaching the hope model, Applying the language, Luring kids into the use of terms, and Kindling a hopeful spirit. The Hope TALK techniques can be used for all age groups. Ideally, parents and teachers will model the techniques for children to learn and adopt themselves. "What we're trying to do is get people to use the language of hope in their daily lives. Parents can use that as they interact with their kids and then researchers and other folks can use that in their work to develop further interventions," Shane said. "You lure the kid into using this and then hopefully you kind of kindle the spirit of hopefulness and goal pursuit."
Hope TALK helps children define and reach their goals, thus increasing hopefulness. The cohort worked with children in fourth, seventh and ninth grades at East Heights Elementary, Cordley Elementary, Central Junior High and J.C. Harmon High School in Kansas City. Teachers in these schools incorporated the Hope TALK techniques into their teaching. The cohort also made an effort to involve parents by bringing them into the schools for demonstrations. Parents were more difficult to reach than teachers, which is where the benefit of the web site comes in. Parents can access the Hope TALK tools online at their convenience to learn how to use the techniques in their interactions with their children. "The teachers have benefited from just using the language, orienting their class to hopeful goal pursuits," Shane said. "We're hopeful that the web site is better about reaching parents," Shane said.
So far, the cohort's efforts appear to be successful. Not only have teachers embraced Hope TALK, but students have also shown improvement as a result of using the techniques. "We're able to get kids more focused on their goals, identify ways to get to their goals and kind of get excited about their goals," Shane said. "Quantitatively speaking, we've been able to increase hope based on our hope scale results. We've been able to increase hope in all three of our age groups, so we're pretty excited about that."
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