A Declaration of Hope: Pandemic Recovery & Resiliency in Alberta K-12 Schools

Hope is that place, and those moments in life, when all is good and right with the world. To be hopeful, we have to imagine these treasured moments in time and then try and bend the arc of the Universe towards them like a directional beacon. We all navigate darkness in the course of a human life; hope is our ally, with resiliency as the means to bend the arc.
​~ Phil McRae September 2021

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The impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on public education systems around the world has been profound. It has accelerated issues of inequity, amplified mental health challenges and highlighted the promises (and perils) of technology across societies.

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In many ways the COVID-19 pandemic is a rapid accelerator of the chronic issues we have faced pre-pandemic in many of our public schools. As we are about to confront the psychological, social & economic fallout during the recovery phase of the pandemic, expected to be from 2022 to 2024, we will be contending with the acute challenges on chronic issues. A place where hope is perhaps difficult to find, and a challenge to maintain with the scale of change, volatility, ambiguity and uncertainty from what will certainly be more complexities across our societal landscape over the next decade.  
 
Feeling Hopeless
As part of an ongoing exploration into what teachers and school leaders are experiencing throughout the province of Alberta, I designed a rapid response feedback tool known as a ‘pandemic pulse survey’ for the profession of teaching. This collection of research studies are the only systematic documentation of the conditions and experiences of Alberta's K to 12 public schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, and as such form an important part of the historic record. Within the different instruments we gathered large data sets on our colleagues’ perspectives on hope.
 
In the most recent ATA pandemic rapid research studies (spring and fall 2021), using random stratified sampling of several thousand professionals, we found that fifty four percent (54%) of Alberta teachers and school leaders identified that they felt hopeless (Alberta Teachers’ Association, 2021). This is a stunning and deeply concerning revelation, and one that has garnered serious attention.
 
Hope is Essential
Hope is essential to the profession of teaching, indeed education itself. Without hope we have difficulty seeing (imagining) the future; which is why teachers teach. To be hopeful in education, we have to imagine the treasured moments in our professional lives and then try and bend the arc of the Universe towards them like a directional beacon. While ‘hope floats’, it does need a lighthouse to navigate the often-stormy seas and darker waters of life. We all navigate significant challenges in the course of our vocation (think emergency remote teaching), but hope must become our ally, with resiliency as the means to bend the arc.
 
Of particular concern as we move into a recovery phase from this global pandemic will be to establish a new declaration of hope for our Alberta K-12 schools, and in doing so draw on individual and collective resiliency that will make hope the new contagion that may spread across our schools as a social epidemic. Think of it as hope as contagion.
 
Hope as Contagion
There are now several research studies that document social contagions, like hope or happiness. For example, Dr. Nicholas Christakis and Dr. James Fowler (2008), analyzed data gathered between the years 1983 and 2003 across nearly 5,000 individuals, which assessed happiness by asking people to respond to statements like “I felt hopeful about the future” and “I was happy.”

What these researchers discovered across more than 53,000 social and family ties was fascinating.
 
When a person in this study reported being happy, then their spouse had an eight per cent chance of becoming happy, with the effects lasting up to one year. The data further showed that the brothers and sisters of a happy sibling had a 14 per cent increased chance of virally catching the happiness bug. Further afield, friends of a happy person living up to a mile away increased their chance of becoming happy by 25 per cent, with next-door neighbours being the beneficiaries of a 34 per cent increased chance of becoming happy. This study also found that while having more friends certainly increased happiness, it was more important to have happy friends who were key influencers of the social network’s happiness.
 
The exact same contagion is needed for hope, where we have the potential as teachers to influence others up to three degrees of separation—a friend of a friend of a friend—and therefore positively impact people with hopefulness that you may have never met in the post pandemic world. In schools this means that the viral spread of hope become a collective and rapidly spreading phenomenon and presents our schools as sites of opportunity to unlock a wider community’s chances of recovery and building resiliency post-pandemic.

References
Alberta Teachers’ Association (2021). Reporting on the Third Acute Wave of
COVID-19 in Alberta K-12 Schools (Spring 2021). https://www.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/ATA/News%20and%20Info/Issues/COVID-19/Reporting-on-the-Third-Acute-Wave-of-COVID-19-in-Alberta-Schools-Spring-2021.pdf (accessed November 1, 2021).
 
Boyles, S. 2008. Happiness is Contagious: Social Networks Affect Mood, Study Shows. WebMD website. https://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20081204/happiness-is-contagious#1 (accessed November 1, 2021).
 
Fowler J., and N. Christakis. 2008. “Dynamic Spread of Happiness in a Large Social Network: Longitudinal Analysis over 20 Years in the Framingham Heart Study.” British Medical Journal 337: a2338. https://www.bmj.com/content/337/bmj.a2338.full (accessed November 1, 2021).
 
Hope Studies Central. 2021. Hope-Lit Database. http://www.hope-lit.ualberta.ca/Hope-LitDatabase.html (accessed November 1, 2021).