On Monday, April 6th, 2026 Brett Baxter defended his dissertation on hope to receive his Doctorate of Education in Educational and Organizational Leadership. This is an expanded excerpt from his dissertation that he graciously shared to be published in the 2026 Spring Equinox issue of The Art (of) Living.
Twenty-four years ago, on a sweltering August day, I walked into my very own classroom as a wet-behind-the-ears, freshly minted, starry-eyed high school English Language Arts teacher with a plan to change lives. Finally, I had my own space where I could create and mold and coach and inspire. I felt called to the work and filled with hope, and after having changed careers at that point in my early thirties, I knew this is where I belonged. Yet in my totally idealistic approach to the noble profession of teaching, I set myself up for disillusionment and burnout.
What I did not know about the life of a public school teacher was this: I would not control my own classroom nearly to the extent I had naively imagined. State-approved curriculum mandates, standardized test preparation, never-ending pressure to get better results each year with a totally new group of students, and endless meetings with new mandates and policies all began to chip away at the armor of hope I had built for myself. On the way to becoming a valiant knight rescuing children from ignorance, one by precious one, I recognized that my professional autonomy was very limited. Student misbehavior was all too often a distraction from what my real purpose was. Both helicopter parents and apathetic guardians sometimes made grading miserable and less than meaningful. To cap it off, at the end of that first school year, my principal walked into my classroom and asked me to sign my annual evaluation. I had not seen him in my classroom until then, other than for fleeting seconds, and certainly had not had any conversations about evaluative measures or expectations. And yet, that first year turned into a second and third, and eventually I served as a classroom teacher for eight years before moving into a school administrator role after much coaxing from colleagues. Coming to terms with the “non-teaching” aspects of “teaching” had been critical for me, and I loved being in that space of energy and growth with students. However, by that time, I had seen two of my colleagues leave the profession after years three and four. Despite their best efforts, they had lost hope that education was an environment in which they could thrive.
Had I been a little more realistic, a little more flexible, or perhaps just a little more patient, those early years might not have been as challenging as they were for me. My aspirations and goals were ambitious, for me and my students. My commitment and dedication to achieving those goals was focused and relentless. However, since my ability to actually control many of those outcomes was, at times, not within my power, or to the degree I expected, my hope faltered. This ultimately led to me seriously questioning my choice to be a teacher, even after all the financial, intellectual, and emotional investments made. Sadly, this experience is not uncommon for early career teachers in K–12 public schools (e.g., Pondiscio, 2025; United States Department of Education, 2015). In fact, my own father had a very similar experience nearly 30 years before me, which in addition to other considerations, led him to eventually choose a different career path. Perhaps what he and I both needed at our crossroads, along with millions of others, was a little more hope.
Stories like mine, along with two decades of experience in K–12 public education and the revolving door of classroom teaching, have ignited a passion within me to explore hope and its positive outcomes more deeply and more specifically in my dissertation study. This undertaking is meaningful to me, yet I hope there will be others who benefit from my meager efforts.
.......
It is this researcher’s theory that people need hope in order to thrive individually and collectively. Hope can facilitate healing even in the most traumatic situations (Gwinn & Hellman, 2018), propel people forward amidst myriad challenges (Smith et al., 2025), and give purpose and direction during different life stages and in general (Snyder, 1994). In short, people benefit significantly from hope. It is encouraging that research has found hope to be a teachable metacognitive skill or trait (Lopez, 2013), so where better to look for hopefulness than in a school or classroom? One of the most influential positions a person can be in is that of teacher. From Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in ancient Greece to Miss Beadle and Mrs. Ingalls in Walnut Grove, we have a plethora of examples of women and men who have had tremendous impact on those in their stewardship. It is with this in mind that this study seeks to understand hopefulness from the point of view of a teacher. My theory is that hope matters to an extent we do not yet understand. High hope teachers matter, because they hold so much potential to impact children in positive or negative ways. Students’ academic achievement, social and emotional well-being, and life satisfaction hang in the balance. We must begin to understand teachers’ social and emotional well-being, life satisfaction, and yes, job satisfaction sooner than later. We must understand their hope from their unique experiences and perspectives.
Teacher quotes:
“You can’t just look at where kids are right now; you have to see where they could be.” (Alex)
“Things that felt catastrophic years ago don’t anymore—I know I’ll get through it.” (Rodrigo)
“Hope is a teaching strategy. If kids know you believe in them, it changes everything.” (Rodrigo)
“Kids start to see themselves differently when someone keeps believing in them.” (Molly)
“When students see what they’re good at, they start to imagine a future.” (Fred)
“Every kid has a strength—you just have to find it.” (Rodrigo)
.......
A particularly salient cross-case finding was the intentional enactment of hope as a pedagogical stance. Teachers repeatedly described hope as something they deliberately communicate to their students through carefully chosen language, deliberate feedback practices, scaffolded goal-setting conversations, and strength-based framing of students’ identities. Hope is embedded in key instructional moves (e.g., reteaching rather than reassigning, reframing failure as healthy iteration, and persistently scaffolding pathways toward mastery). Importantly then, hope for these teachers is not merely a closely guarded internal belief, but a skill, a mindset, even modus operandi to be actively and relationally transmitted. Participants frequently connected their own
hopefulness to students’ developing sense of agency, suggesting that teacher hope may function as a catalyst for the formation of student identity. This finding resonates with literature on expectancy effects (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968), growth-oriented feedback (Dweck, 2006), and the social transmission of belief (Bandura, 1997), reinforcing this study’s central premise that beyond students’ individual hope, teacher hope has meaningful implications for student academic and psychosocial outcomes.
Ultimately, these [teachers’] collective stories point toward practical implications consistent with this study’s stated purpose. If teacher hope is both enacted and environmentally shaped, then teacher preparation systems, ongoing professional development content and structure, and perhaps most critically, school leadership all play pivotal roles in its cultivation and nurture. Participants implicitly and explicitly referenced the sustaining power of collegial collaboration, administrative trust and recognition, shared mission, and opportunities for reflective renewal. Thus, fostering hope-rich learning environments requires systemic attention—not simply exhortations to “stay positive.” The results suggest that when teachers are supported in articulating meaningful goals, developing flexible instructional pathways, and sustaining a sense of professional agency, hope becomes both personally sustaining and pedagogically generative. In fact, teachers’ stories describe hope as being bidirectionally contagious. With this perspective, these findings extend Snyder’s (1994) framework into the dynamic environment of K–12 classrooms and offer a foundational structure for leaders seeking to strengthen teacher well-being and foster student success through the intentional cultivation of hope.
(Excerpts from Agents of Hope: A Narrative Inquiry of K–12 Teachers’ Perceptions of Hopefulness in High-Poverty Schools, a doctoral dissertation by Brett J. Baxter)
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman.
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset. Random House.
Gwinn C., & Hellman, C. (2018). Hope rising: How the science of hope can change your life. Morgan James Publishing.
Lopez, S. J. (2013). Making hope happen: Create the future you want for yourself and others (1st Atria books hardcover ed.). Atria Books.
Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and
pupils’ intellectual development. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Smith, C. D., Beardslee, J., Frick, P. J., Steinberg, L. D., & Cauffman, E. (2025). Teachers as
beacons of hope: The mediating role of future expectations on the association between
student-teacher relationships and justice-involved adolescents’ grades and offending.
Crime and Delinquency. 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00111287241311249
Snyder, C. R. (1994). The psychology of hope: You can get there from here. Free Press.
On Monday, April 6th, 2026 Brett Baxter defended his dissertation on hope to receive his Doctorate of Education in Educational and Organizational Leadership. This is an expanded excerpt from his dissertation that he graciously shared to be published in the 2026 Spring Equinox issue of The Art (of) Living.
Twenty-four years ago, on a sweltering August day, I walked into my very own classroom as a wet-behind-the-ears, freshly minted, starry-eyed high school English Language Arts teacher with a plan to change lives. Finally, I had my own space where I could create and mold and coach and inspire. I felt called to the work and filled with hope, and after having changed careers at that point in my early thirties, I knew this is where I belonged. Yet in my totally idealistic approach to the noble profession of teaching, I set myself up for disillusionment and burnout.
What I did not know about the life of a public school teacher was this: I would not control my own classroom nearly to the extent I had naively imagined. State-approved curriculum mandates, standardized test preparation, never-ending pressure to get better results each year with a totally new group of students, and endless meetings with new mandates and policies all began to chip away at the armor of hope I had built for myself. On the way to becoming a valiant knight rescuing children from ignorance, one by precious one, I recognized that my professional autonomy was very limited. Student misbehavior was all too often a distraction from what my real purpose was. Both helicopter parents and apathetic guardians sometimes made grading miserable and less than meaningful. To cap it off, at the end of that first school year, my principal walked into my classroom and asked me to sign my annual evaluation. I had not seen him in my classroom until then, other than for fleeting seconds, and certainly had not had any conversations about evaluative measures or expectations. And yet, that first year turned into a second and third, and eventually I served as a classroom teacher for eight years before moving into a school administrator role after much coaxing from colleagues. Coming to terms with the “non-teaching” aspects of “teaching” had been critical for me, and I loved being in that space of energy and growth with students. However, by that time, I had seen two of my colleagues leave the profession after years three and four. Despite their best efforts, they had lost hope that education was an environment in which they could thrive.
Had I been a little more realistic, a little more flexible, or perhaps just a little more patient, those early years might not have been as challenging as they were for me. My aspirations and goals were ambitious, for me and my students. My commitment and dedication to achieving those goals was focused and relentless. However, since my ability to actually control many of those outcomes was, at times, not within my power, or to the degree I expected, my hope faltered. This ultimately led to me seriously questioning my choice to be a teacher, even after all the financial, intellectual, and emotional investments made. Sadly, this experience is not uncommon for early career teachers in K–12 public schools (e.g., Pondiscio, 2025; United States Department of Education, 2015). In fact, my own father had a very similar experience nearly 30 years before me, which in addition to other considerations, led him to eventually choose a different career path. Perhaps what he and I both needed at our crossroads, along with millions of others, was a little more hope.
Stories like mine, along with two decades of experience in K–12 public education and the revolving door of classroom teaching, have ignited a passion within me to explore hope and its positive outcomes more deeply and more specifically in my dissertation study. This undertaking is meaningful to me, yet I hope there will be others who benefit from my meager efforts.
.......
It is this researcher’s theory that people need hope in order to thrive individually and collectively. Hope can facilitate healing even in the most traumatic situations (Gwinn & Hellman, 2018), propel people forward amidst myriad challenges (Smith et al., 2025), and give purpose and direction during different life stages and in general (Snyder, 1994). In short, people benefit significantly from hope. It is encouraging that research has found hope to be a teachable metacognitive skill or trait (Lopez, 2013), so where better to look for hopefulness than in a school or classroom? One of the most influential positions a person can be in is that of teacher. From Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in ancient Greece to Miss Beadle and Mrs. Ingalls in Walnut Grove, we have a plethora of examples of women and men who have had tremendous impact on those in their stewardship. It is with this in mind that this study seeks to understand hopefulness from the point of view of a teacher. My theory is that hope matters to an extent we do not yet understand. High hope teachers matter, because they hold so much potential to impact children in positive or negative ways. Students’ academic achievement, social and emotional well-being, and life satisfaction hang in the balance. We must begin to understand teachers’ social and emotional well-being, life satisfaction, and yes, job satisfaction sooner than later. We must understand their hope from their unique experiences and perspectives.
Teacher quotes:
“You can’t just look at where kids are right now; you have to see where they could be.” (Alex)
“Things that felt catastrophic years ago don’t anymore—I know I’ll get through it.” (Rodrigo)
“Hope is a teaching strategy. If kids know you believe in them, it changes everything.” (Rodrigo)
“Kids start to see themselves differently when someone keeps believing in them.” (Molly)
“When students see what they’re good at, they start to imagine a future.” (Fred)
“Every kid has a strength—you just have to find it.” (Rodrigo)
.......
A particularly salient cross-case finding was the intentional enactment of hope as a pedagogical stance. Teachers repeatedly described hope as something they deliberately communicate to their students through carefully chosen language, deliberate feedback practices, scaffolded goal-setting conversations, and strength-based framing of students’ identities. Hope is embedded in key instructional moves (e.g., reteaching rather than reassigning, reframing failure as healthy iteration, and persistently scaffolding pathways toward mastery). Importantly then, hope for these teachers is not merely a closely guarded internal belief, but a skill, a mindset, even modus operandi to be actively and relationally transmitted. Participants frequently connected their own
hopefulness to students’ developing sense of agency, suggesting that teacher hope may function as a catalyst for the formation of student identity. This finding resonates with literature on expectancy effects (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968), growth-oriented feedback (Dweck, 2006), and the social transmission of belief (Bandura, 1997), reinforcing this study’s central premise that beyond students’ individual hope, teacher hope has meaningful implications for student academic and psychosocial outcomes.
Ultimately, these [teachers’] collective stories point toward practical implications consistent with this study’s stated purpose. If teacher hope is both enacted and environmentally shaped, then teacher preparation systems, ongoing professional development content and structure, and perhaps most critically, school leadership all play pivotal roles in its cultivation and nurture. Participants implicitly and explicitly referenced the sustaining power of collegial collaboration, administrative trust and recognition, shared mission, and opportunities for reflective renewal. Thus, fostering hope-rich learning environments requires systemic attention—not simply exhortations to “stay positive.” The results suggest that when teachers are supported in articulating meaningful goals, developing flexible instructional pathways, and sustaining a sense of professional agency, hope becomes both personally sustaining and pedagogically generative. In fact, teachers’ stories describe hope as being bidirectionally contagious. With this perspective, these findings extend Snyder’s (1994) framework into the dynamic environment of K–12 classrooms and offer a foundational structure for leaders seeking to strengthen teacher well-being and foster student success through the intentional cultivation of hope.
(Excerpts from Agents of Hope: A Narrative Inquiry of K–12 Teachers’ Perceptions of Hopefulness in High-Poverty Schools, a doctoral dissertation by Brett J. Baxter)
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman.
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset. Random House.
Gwinn C., & Hellman, C. (2018). Hope rising: How the science of hope can change your life. Morgan James Publishing.
Lopez, S. J. (2013). Making hope happen: Create the future you want for yourself and others (1st Atria books hardcover ed.). Atria Books.
Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and
pupils’ intellectual development. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Smith, C. D., Beardslee, J., Frick, P. J., Steinberg, L. D., & Cauffman, E. (2025). Teachers as
beacons of hope: The mediating role of future expectations on the association between
student-teacher relationships and justice-involved adolescents’ grades and offending.
Crime and Delinquency. 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00111287241311249
Snyder, C. R. (1994). The psychology of hope: You can get there from here. Free Press.
On Monday, April 6th, 2026 Brett Baxter defended his dissertation on hope to receive his Doctorate of Education in Educational and Organizational Leadership. This is an expanded excerpt from his dissertation that he graciously shared to be published in the 2026 Spring Equinox issue of The Art (of) Living.
Twenty-four years ago, on a sweltering August day, I walked into my very own classroom as a wet-behind-the-ears, freshly minted, starry-eyed high school English Language Arts teacher with a plan to change lives. Finally, I had my own space where I could create and mold and coach and inspire. I felt called to the work and filled with hope, and after having changed careers at that point in my early thirties, I knew this is where I belonged. Yet in my totally idealistic approach to the noble profession of teaching, I set myself up for disillusionment and burnout.
What I did not know about the life of a public school teacher was this: I would not control my own classroom nearly to the extent I had naively imagined. State-approved curriculum mandates, standardized test preparation, never-ending pressure to get better results each year with a totally new group of students, and endless meetings with new mandates and policies all began to chip away at the armor of hope I had built for myself. On the way to becoming a valiant knight rescuing children from ignorance, one by precious one, I recognized that my professional autonomy was very limited. Student misbehavior was all too often a distraction from what my real purpose was. Both helicopter parents and apathetic guardians sometimes made grading miserable and less than meaningful. To cap it off, at the end of that first school year, my principal walked into my classroom and asked me to sign my annual evaluation. I had not seen him in my classroom until then, other than for fleeting seconds, and certainly had not had any conversations about evaluative measures or expectations. And yet, that first year turned into a second and third, and eventually I served as a classroom teacher for eight years before moving into a school administrator role after much coaxing from colleagues. Coming to terms with the “non-teaching” aspects of “teaching” had been critical for me, and I loved being in that space of energy and growth with students. However, by that time, I had seen two of my colleagues leave the profession after years three and four. Despite their best efforts, they had lost hope that education was an environment in which they could thrive.
Had I been a little more realistic, a little more flexible, or perhaps just a little more patient, those early years might not have been as challenging as they were for me. My aspirations and goals were ambitious, for me and my students. My commitment and dedication to achieving those goals was focused and relentless. However, since my ability to actually control many of those outcomes was, at times, not within my power, or to the degree I expected, my hope faltered. This ultimately led to me seriously questioning my choice to be a teacher, even after all the financial, intellectual, and emotional investments made. Sadly, this experience is not uncommon for early career teachers in K–12 public schools (e.g., Pondiscio, 2025; United States Department of Education, 2015). In fact, my own father had a very similar experience nearly 30 years before me, which in addition to other considerations, led him to eventually choose a different career path. Perhaps what he and I both needed at our crossroads, along with millions of others, was a little more hope.
Stories like mine, along with two decades of experience in K–12 public education and the revolving door of classroom teaching, have ignited a passion within me to explore hope and its positive outcomes more deeply and more specifically in my dissertation study. This undertaking is meaningful to me, yet I hope there will be others who benefit from my meager efforts.
.......
It is this researcher’s theory that people need hope in order to thrive individually and collectively. Hope can facilitate healing even in the most traumatic situations (Gwinn & Hellman, 2018), propel people forward amidst myriad challenges (Smith et al., 2025), and give purpose and direction during different life stages and in general (Snyder, 1994). In short, people benefit significantly from hope. It is encouraging that research has found hope to be a teachable metacognitive skill or trait (Lopez, 2013), so where better to look for hopefulness than in a school or classroom? One of the most influential positions a person can be in is that of teacher. From Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in ancient Greece to Miss Beadle and Mrs. Ingalls in Walnut Grove, we have a plethora of examples of women and men who have had tremendous impact on those in their stewardship. It is with this in mind that this study seeks to understand hopefulness from the point of view of a teacher. My theory is that hope matters to an extent we do not yet understand. High hope teachers matter, because they hold so much potential to impact children in positive or negative ways. Students’ academic achievement, social and emotional well-being, and life satisfaction hang in the balance. We must begin to understand teachers’ social and emotional well-being, life satisfaction, and yes, job satisfaction sooner than later. We must understand their hope from their unique experiences and perspectives.
Teacher quotes:
“You can’t just look at where kids are right now; you have to see where they could be.” (Alex)
“Things that felt catastrophic years ago don’t anymore—I know I’ll get through it.” (Rodrigo)
“Hope is a teaching strategy. If kids know you believe in them, it changes everything.” (Rodrigo)
“Kids start to see themselves differently when someone keeps believing in them.” (Molly)
“When students see what they’re good at, they start to imagine a future.” (Fred)
“Every kid has a strength—you just have to find it.” (Rodrigo)
.......
A particularly salient cross-case finding was the intentional enactment of hope as a pedagogical stance. Teachers repeatedly described hope as something they deliberately communicate to their students through carefully chosen language, deliberate feedback practices, scaffolded goal-setting conversations, and strength-based framing of students’ identities. Hope is embedded in key instructional moves (e.g., reteaching rather than reassigning, reframing failure as healthy iteration, and persistently scaffolding pathways toward mastery). Importantly then, hope for these teachers is not merely a closely guarded internal belief, but a skill, a mindset, even modus operandi to be actively and relationally transmitted. Participants frequently connected their own
hopefulness to students’ developing sense of agency, suggesting that teacher hope may function as a catalyst for the formation of student identity. This finding resonates with literature on expectancy effects (Rosenthal & Jacobson, 1968), growth-oriented feedback (Dweck, 2006), and the social transmission of belief (Bandura, 1997), reinforcing this study’s central premise that beyond students’ individual hope, teacher hope has meaningful implications for student academic and psychosocial outcomes.
Ultimately, these [teachers’] collective stories point toward practical implications consistent with this study’s stated purpose. If teacher hope is both enacted and environmentally shaped, then teacher preparation systems, ongoing professional development content and structure, and perhaps most critically, school leadership all play pivotal roles in its cultivation and nurture. Participants implicitly and explicitly referenced the sustaining power of collegial collaboration, administrative trust and recognition, shared mission, and opportunities for reflective renewal. Thus, fostering hope-rich learning environments requires systemic attention—not simply exhortations to “stay positive.” The results suggest that when teachers are supported in articulating meaningful goals, developing flexible instructional pathways, and sustaining a sense of professional agency, hope becomes both personally sustaining and pedagogically generative. In fact, teachers’ stories describe hope as being bidirectionally contagious. With this perspective, these findings extend Snyder’s (1994) framework into the dynamic environment of K–12 classrooms and offer a foundational structure for leaders seeking to strengthen teacher well-being and foster student success through the intentional cultivation of hope.
(Excerpts from Agents of Hope: A Narrative Inquiry of K–12 Teachers’ Perceptions of Hopefulness in High-Poverty Schools, a doctoral dissertation by Brett J. Baxter)
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman.
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset. Random House.
Gwinn C., & Hellman, C. (2018). Hope rising: How the science of hope can change your life. Morgan James Publishing.
Lopez, S. J. (2013). Making hope happen: Create the future you want for yourself and others (1st Atria books hardcover ed.). Atria Books.
Rosenthal, R., & Jacobson, L. (1968). Pygmalion in the classroom: Teacher expectation and
pupils’ intellectual development. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Smith, C. D., Beardslee, J., Frick, P. J., Steinberg, L. D., & Cauffman, E. (2025). Teachers as
beacons of hope: The mediating role of future expectations on the association between
student-teacher relationships and justice-involved adolescents’ grades and offending.
Crime and Delinquency. 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00111287241311249
Snyder, C. R. (1994). The psychology of hope: You can get there from here. Free Press.
