Radical Hope

Cultivating Possibility in the Classroom and Beyond

Hope is a seed that cannot be planted without a deep understanding of the soil in which it grows. It is not passive or complacent. It is not hope as a dream, waiting for a better world to arrive, but a radical, embodied practice, rooted in resistance and existence. Hope is an action — it is the fierce belief that we can transform what is into what must be, even when the weight of history presses down on us, and when the systems we navigate try to tell us that nothing can change.

In our classrooms, we must teach our students this kind of hope — one that is not naive or distant, but a hope grounded in the harsh realities of the world. This kind of hope demands that we engage with the suffering of the world — not to be crushed by it, but to respond to it with boldness, imagination, and a refusal to let the world stay the same. This is what we are called to do as educators — not to merely transmit knowledge but to cultivate futures.

Hope is the Practice of Radical Reimagination

What does it mean to reimagine the future when the present feels so broken? Radical hope demands that we see possibility in the most impossible places, that we create something new from the rubble. It is a practice of reimagining the classroom as a space where transformation is not just possible but inevitable. It’s about nurturing students who can look at the systems around them and say, “This doesn’t have to be this way. We can do better.”

This hope is dangerous. It is dangerous to believe in possibility when all around you, the powers that be insist that things cannot be different. But in believing in a different reality, we reject the notion that the present moment is the best we can do. We reject the limitations of our current systems and step into the unknown, knowing that real change is born from the discomfort of the unknown.

To cultivate hope through reimagination, we must ask ourselves:

How do I create a classroom that challenges the status quo and invites students to dream beyond what they see in front of them?

How do I push beyond conventional structures of education and ask my students to imagine new ways of being, learning, and existing in the world?

The ways we engage radical reimagination will differ depending on our own contexts, our own style, our students, and our ways of being, but the following are some suggestions that might inspire you to think of new ways to engage radical hope, possibility, and imagination in your classrooms and communities:

Shift the Lens

Integrate learning opportunities that challenge dominant narratives and encourage students to envision alternate futures. This might mean using speculative fiction or narrative exercises where students write or illustrate their own imagines futures. Seek out the work and words of Octavia Butler for inspiration!

Invite Student Visioning

Set aside time for students to design what they want their classroom to look like, sound like, and feel like. Invite them to think about the world they want to see and let them feel ownership over that vision. Creating a collective classroom playlist can be a joyful experience and also gives you and your students the opportunity to dance while creating a space that inspires hope through education! Earth, Wind, and Fire, Stevie Wonder, and Redbone are always a hit!

Create Possibilities Through Projects

Use project-based learning where students co-create solutions to real-world problems. Center their voices in how solutions emerge. One of my incredible colleagues created a game where students reflected the real world countries and conflicts of our time, including an alien invasion and an asteroid or two, and had to work together and find solutions that were not only inspiring but also gave us as teachers great hope in our collective future, too!

Radical Hope is Rooted in Community and Interconnection

adrienne maree brown speaks of “emergence,” the concept that change arises in unexpected, often nonlinear ways. In the classroom, this emergence comes through connection — connection to our students, to the community, and to the larger world around us. This is not an isolated task. The work of radical hope is a collective endeavour, one that requires us to build together, to grow together, to stand in solidarity with each other.

In the classroom, this means shifting from individualistic thinking to a collective mindset. No one student can be seen as an island or isolated case, and no single teacher has all the answers. True hope comes from recognizing our shared humanity and working together to create a world that we can all thrive in.

Hope doesn’t live in isolation; it grows through the roots of community. It flourishes when we build relationships built on mutual respect and understanding. We must ask ourselves:

How can I create a classroom culture where everyone feels deeply connected to one another?

How do I invite my students into the process of shaping our collective experience?

Here are some ideas for fostering community and interconnection with your students. Please feel free to adapt these suggestions to your context!

Start with Shared Agreements

Instead of rules, create agreements that are co-authored with your students. Ask them: What values do we want to uphold in this space? Let them design the norms of respect, care, and responsibility. In my classroom, we grounded our agreement in the Grandfather Teachings. Students would take great care to ensure that the words on the whiteboard we wrote these teachings on were re-written if a backpack or hoodie accidentally wiped them off while trying to get by in an overpopulated classroom. The students would refer to the whiteboard when conflicts arose and it became our touchstone throughout the year.

Ground Yourselves in Collaborative Learning

Encourage students to work in diverse groups, where they can learn from one another’s experiences and perspectives. One of the joys of my career is seeing students who would not have opportunities to get to know one another become a shared community and family by the end of our class semester together and these relationships would continue after high school. Design group activities that require interdependence and collective problem-solving as these give students opportunities to truly get to know one another in deeper ways than surface-level or transactional circumstances.

Deepen Relationships

Make time for one-on-one check-ins with students. Prioritize this. Get to know your students and their stories, struggles, and dreams. Create a community where each person’s humanity is seen and honoured. Every hour you spend after class is an hour that comes back to your classroom and community tenfold. These were the moments that reminded me of why I became an educator and were gifts that I returned to on hard days to remind myself to keep hope alive. This is reciprocity at its most soulful and service at its most sacred as we serve a future that is life-affirming and heart-based.

Healing and Transformation in Every Breath

Radical hope is also an act of healing. It is the recognition that while we may be wounded by the systems of oppression around us, we do not have to stay broken. Healing is not about erasing the past, but about acknowledging it, understanding its impact, and using that knowledge to create a new future. This is what it means to move beyond trauma, to step into the power of resilience, and to become a force for change.

Every breath we take as educators, every action we make in the classroom, can be an act of healing. Healing the wounds that come from a colonial system. Healing the wounds caused by oppression, isolation, and neglect. And healing ourselves as we fight to build a future we can believe in. But healing, like hope, is not passive. It’s an ongoing practice, and it requires deep self-reflection, humility, and accountability.

Hope is also rooted in the practice of healing. Healing doesn’t mean returning to “normal”; it means acknowledging pain and using it to grow and move forward. Ask yourself:

What does healing look like in my classroom for both my students and myself?

How can I provide spaces for emotional expression and vulnerability?

How do we embody daily healing and integrate it into our practice? How do we live healing-centred pedagogy every day? How can we learn to heal ourselves deeper so that we may be best equipped to heal others when they require our support? Can we recognize joy as a deep part of radical hope and healing? How do we shift our understanding of trauma from pathology to possibility? Below, you will find some ideas to consider and see if any would fit your context or experiences:

Make Space for Emotional Expression

Designate time for students to express what’s weighing on their hearts, spirit, and mind, whether that is through journaling, art, or group conversations. Normalize vulnerability as part of the learning experience. We do often focus on the physical, mental, or emotional that we forget students need a sense of connection that is grounded deeper in the spirit. In a world that has become irony-poisoned, creating a standard of being where insincerity and cruelty is the means of receiving attention, remind students that the best parts of them are their ability to relate to others and themselves in sincerity. They’re worth authentic connection.

Model Healing Practice

Our students know when we are not healed. Students pick up on workplace gossip and can tell when the adults in the building are not regulated. We aren’t fooling the kids, as my friend and colleague would say! It is important not to “trauma dump” on our students or trauma bond with them. We again have a responsibility to recognize that these boundaries must be upheld out of respect for our position and our students. This does not mean that we cannot share our experiences as long as they come with deeper lessons we have learned. It is okay to let our students know when we are having an “off” day so that they do not internalize our “off” behaviour as though they have done something to upset us. In fact, students sometimes appreciate this so that they can step-up and try to give back. I recall one friend of mine saying that my inability to ask for help was selfish: I help others but I rob others of the joy of helping in return. We forget that being a helper gives a sense of purpose and joy for our students, as well. My students began noticing, as my work days became overscheduled, that I was not finishing my lunches as I was consistently interrupted. The students (and their families) began bringing me food, becoming personal security guards letting people know that I needed to finish my lunch. We laughed, I was fed, and the students felt the joy of a job well done.

We need to let students in and be transparent without spilling our guts (which, as Fran Lebowitz always says, is about as appealing as it sounds). We can and should share our healing journeys with our students — not through oversharing, but offering glimpses of our own growth and emotional resilience. This gives the gift of radical hope to our students. They begin to see the adults around them as people who have risen above the fray to learn another day.

Provide Emotional Literacy Tools

Teach students emotional literacy through activities that ground the classroom in mindfulness, breathing, connection, and regular check-ins to help them identify and express their feelings. Every Friday I would take my class outside to smudge in circle on our shorter days. These classes were crucial to grounding our classroom and supporting the students in deepening the respect for Indigenous ways of being, belonging, knowing, and doing and recognizing their own connection to one another, the land, and their values. Those moments in the sunshine on the field brought us closer together in trust than any lesson I could have provided as the students shared their learning, their thoughts, their feelings, and their hopes and dreams for reconciliation and the world. It helped the students to recognize the power and beauty of Indigenous ways of being that were not solely rooted in trauma; in this way, the students meaningfully decolonized their perception of the world and their role within it.

Hope Requires Courage to Let Go of Old Ways

Finally, radical hope asks us to release old ways of thinking, being, and doing. It requires that we break down the walls that confine us — walls of false tradition, fear, and limitation — and open ourselves to new possibilities. It is not easy work. It demands that we confront the discomfort of change, the unknown, and our own biases and assumptions. We must be willing to face the ways we have been complicit in maintaining systems of power and to shift our approach to teaching, learning, and leading.

As educators, we must be the architects of this transformation. We must design classrooms that do not just deliver content but that offer spaces for collective growth. We must make room for our students to envision themselves as agents of change, as architects of their own futures. In teaching them how to dream boldly, we give them the tools to make those dreams a reality.

Hope demands that we release the past in order to embrace the unknown. Letting go of old systems and structures might be uncomfortable, but it is necessary for creating change that benefits all. We must ask ourselves:

What old structures of control and hierarchy am I holding onto that no longer serve my students or myself?

How can I approach change with courage and a willingness to unlearn?

Letting go of old ways is easier said than done. Some of our ways of being are so deeply embedded in our bone marrow we believe that they are who we are. I would always tell my students that the importance of travel and engaging with other cultures is recognizing that the ways of being in your own culture might not be the best way. For instance, I would say how in Turkey you are given tea everywhere you go and, as an avid tea drinker, how I would love this to be the usual practice in colonized Canada (as tea is most certainly present if we were solely Turtle Island)! We are enriched as we expand our understanding.

It is as James Baldwin said:

For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock.

Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us.

The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

How do we let go of old ways? Here are some ideas I would love to share with you to consider:

Unlearn to Learn

Be intentional about the ways you challenge your own biases and assumptions. Ask yourself: How might I be complicit in systems of control, even unintentionally? Engage in continuous learning and unlearning around issues of power, privilege, and oppression.

Experiment with New Models

Try different approaches to teaching that break away from traditional methods. Look to ancestral knowledge. For example, use circles or horseshoe shapes instead of rows in seating arrangements or open up opportunities for student-led discussions.

Or simply: go outside.

Embrace Discomfort

Understand that change is not always smooth. When you feel resistance, whether from students, families, colleagues, or yourself, recognize it as part of the transformation process. Make space for discomfort, and stay presence through it.

As adrienne maree brown says, “less prep, more presence.”

Radical Hope is Possible Because We Are Here Together

Radical hope is possible because we are still here.

We are still breathing, still fighting, still imagining.

We are here. We continue because we are bound together in this struggle for justice and liberation. How can we remind ourselves and our students that our collective power lies in our togetherness? How do we help students feel supported and never alone in their work for transformation? How do we help one another do the same?

When we involve students in collective leadership, allowing them to take charge of classroom projects, discussions, or organizing efforts, we transform. When students feel empowered to make decisions, hope grows.

When we celebrate community wins, those small and large victories within our classrooms, whether it is a student presenting their work confidently, the class collaborating successfully (and defeating the alien invasion and saving the world), or a challenging conversation being had against all odds, acknowledge and celebrate these moments. Micro-affirmations can change the temperature of every room. Hope can be our thermostat.

And finally, encourage acts of solidarity. Show students that change doesn’t come from just one individual but through collective action. Support and amplify the voices and ideas of marginalized students and encourage everyone to engage in acts of solidarity within the classroom and beyond.

Hope is not a passive waiting, but a radical act of co-creation. In every lesson, in every moment, we have the power to ignite the spark of possibility within ourselves and our students. Let us weave the threads of connection, healing, and transformation into the fabric of our classrooms, knowing that as we plant these seeds, they will grow into something far greater than we could ever imagine.

Despite the immense weight of the world, we continue. We continue because we believe in the power of love, the power of community, and the power of change. And most of all, we continue because we know that hope is not just a dream — it is the root of all life. It is where we breathe into every classroom, into every student, into every moment.

We are here and we will make the future we deserve. Together, we cultivate the future.

Yours in the struggle and the hope,

Ms. K