Hope: A New Skill, 4 ways to support a student's sense of ownership

Hope A New Skill: 4 Ways to Support a Student’s Sense of Ownership – Part 2

by

What does that support actually look like in practice? Based on the research, it’s heavily focused on walking alongside:

  • Help students create a real goal, then let them own it. Ownership is the fuel of agency thinking. When adults hand students the goal instead of helping them find their own, they eliminate the very thing that builds motivation.
  • Teach pathways thinking, not just positivity. Instead of saying “it’ll all work out,” try “okay, that route didn’t work and now what other solutions can we implement?” Studies show hopeful students specifically distinguish themselves by generating alternate routes when they hit obstacles, not by feeling more optimistic in general (Yukai Chou).
  • Show up consistently, not just in a crisis. Long-term studies of natural mentoring relationships found that adolescents with a stable non-parental mentor had higher educational attainment, greater self-efficacy and optimism in adulthood, and lower rates of depression years later (Evidence-Based Mentoring). The relationship itself, not a single interaction or pep talk, will move the needle.
  • Believe in the student’s future without reservations. Research on mentoring and the transition to adulthood found that having a mentor predicted young people pursuing more education, greater job autonomy, and jobs that better matched their career goals (William & Mary ScholarWorks). Adults who consistently reflect a student’s potential back to them create the foundation to help that student start to believe it too. The added bonus is having a mentor who also is adept at modeling that behavior in their own life circumstances.

Your Next Chapter Is Already Being Written

If you’re a student reading this, give yourself a pat on the back! Now you get to decide what happens next, and that’s not intimidating, it’s exciting! The pathways ahead of you are wider than they feel right now. Setbacks aren’t evidence you’re not cut out for this; they’re proof you’re getting great practice in resilience and perseverance in the process, the same process every resilient, successful person has walked through before you and will certainly walk through after you.

First Step: Set a goal.

Second Step: Find more than one way to get there.

Third Step: Trust that when one road closes, you’re capable of finding another. That’s not naive optimism, it’s a research-backed strategy for actually getting where you want to go.

And if you’re one of the adults walking alongside a student, you don’t need to have all the answers. You just keep showing up and helping them see more than one path forward. Remind them, especially on the hard days, that this bend in the road is doable and doesn’t stop their story. It’s the practice in the middle. Students, remember the best chapters are usually the ones written right after the hardest ones.

Life isn’t a straight line and it was never supposed to be. Welcome the twists, turns, and every other obstacle in between. Congratulations on getting your story off to an advantageous start!

Sources