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Collecting Hopes and Dreams

 “It’s important to remember that behind every data point is a daughter, a mother, a sister – a person with hopes and dreams.” — Melinda French Gates

Image and wordcloud from ncec.catholic.edu.au

I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to visit a number of schools over the past few weeks, and see first-hand how teachers are making countless decisions every day to personalize learning. It strikes me that one of the positives to come from our years of lockdowns is a deeper understanding that context matters, and a willingness to find out more about the unique context that our students bring with them to our classrooms each day. 


One aspect of context that I am interested in learning more about is “hopes and dreams”: What do our students wish for their future and how does that impact their learning in the present? How might your grade 10 geography lesson plans change if you knew what career your students were aspiring to? How would you group students in PHE class if you knew each student’s character strengths profile? Would knowing what values are important to your students influence disciplinary conversations?


I’ve been evaluating a number of different measures, including the Clifton Youth Strengths Explorer, the VIA Institute Character Strengths assessment, and The Talent Enthusiasts Hope Survey. I hope to find some commonalities and put together a tool for using this valuable data to inform teaching and learning. If you have another assessment you recommend, or if you have any suggestions for how you would like to access, visualize, and use this data, let me know in the comments.

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