Kitsap Strong Supports Hope Education Across Washington

Feelings of hope among young people declined during the pandemic. In 2021, OSPI partnered with Kitsap Strong to teach hope to students and educators in Washington’s schools. Now, teachers are seeing a positive change.

Kitsap Strong is a community-based organization (CBO) that works to improve the well-being of families in Kitsap County, with one of their goals being to reduce the percentage of residents reporting three or more adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Hope Science is one way they’re working toward that goal.

ACEs are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Alyson Rotter, Director of Education Innovation at Kitsap Strong, said the CBO was organized 8 years ago with the intention of mobilizing the community around ACEs. According to their data from 2015, 37% of Kitsap County residents aged 18–34 had experienced three or more ACEs.

“What would it look like if we empowered our community with the science [of hope] and then mobilize around the idea of [preventing] childhood trauma?” Rotter said. “How do we mitigate the impacts of [ACEs] by building a resilient community?”

Hope Science was developed by the Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa. Hope is the belief that the future will be better, and we have the power to make it so. Since the spring of 2021, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) has partnered with Kitsap Strong to bring Hope Science to educators who can then teach it to their students. This project is funded through a portion of OSPI’s federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) dollars.

Below, OSPI shares information about Kitsap Strong’s approach to teaching Hope Science and illustrates how students in a small school district southwest of Bremerton are creating hope by practicing goals, pathways, and agency in their daily lives. (This story is the second in a two-part series. Read the first part here.)

Kitsap Strong

Kitsap Strong works with state agencies like OSPI, as well as other CBOs, to develop programs that address public concerns like homelessness, poverty, and mental health to build a resilient community. Hope Science is one of their education initiatives.

In their education initiatives, Kitsap Strong works with community partners and local schools to transform systems — for example, how schools can use hope skills to guide policies and practices concerning student behavior. Rotter used the metaphor of a leaky water pipe to explain this idea.

“If you have a leaky pipe at home, you don’t blame the water, you fix the pipe” Rotter said. “It’s not the students we need to fix, it’s the pipe.”

In the spring of 2021, OSPI and Kitsap Strong started a Hope Science pilot project at schools in Kitsap County. With support from ESSER funding secured in the fall of 2021, the project has expanded to 23 of Washington’s school districts across the state.

Kitsap Strong has now trained multiple cohorts of educators on the science of hope. Called Hope Navigators, these educators then took this training back to their schools and developed hope projects based on the needs of their school.

Hope is the belief that the future will be better and that we have the power to steer our destiny. Hope is defined by three elements: goals, pathways, and agency. Goals are tangible — the thing we want to achieve. Pathways are the actions we take to achieve our goals. Agency is the choices we have in life that allow us to pursue our goals.

Many schools are using hope to address attendance and re-engagement efforts. For Sand Hill Elementary School in the North Mason School District, Hope Science is being used to boost learning and the emotional well-being of students.

North Mason School District

Students at Sand Hill Elementary are learning hope skills by incorporating them into their daily activities and existing curriculum.

Each month, students select a characteristic to focus on schoolwide. For example, a characteristic of independent learners is, ‘I can show my best effort on my work.’ For students in third grade, this can look like keeping their supplies organized so they are ready to do their work.

Students use hope skills to take charge of their own learning. They set personal goals, choose their path toward the goal, and self-evaluate.

“I want them to practice it, … then for them to actually see if they’ve attained it or not,” said Maria Jensen, who teaches third grade at Sand Hill.

To reduce the stigma around asking for help, students are shown that learning happens on a continuum and that each person’s goals are unique. Students learn to recognize when they need help and how they can get it.

Hope is “being able to see yourself [as] capable, being able to see yourself growing, and not feeling stuck,” Jensen said.

Since integrating the principles of Hope Science in her classroom, Jensen has seen a positive change in her students’ emotional well-being.

“I’ve seen more confidence,” she said. “I’ve seen better self-talk. I’ve seen many kids be able to process through what happened [with their emotions] and make a strategy.”

Juliet Tran, a school counselor at Sand Hill, said Hope Science has given her a new tool to help students and educators through difficult situations.

Tran said it gives her hope “to be able to share with them that the future can be better than today, and you have the power to make it so, so they’re not stuck.”

“It goes both ways — giving them hope and creating a better future — but it also gives me hope in my job,” Tran added. “It’s just as important that teachers and educators have hope, too.”

This story was written by Jenny Sandbo, Communications Intern at OSPI. You can contact the Communications Team at commteam@k12.wa.us.