Pandora's box: How to foster hope in Secondary students

Abstract

Our students are besieged by the word “crisis”. We realized this when we asked them, in an oral presentation at the beginning of the course, how they imagined the year 2040. Two  3^rd grade Spanish Language teachers decided to address the lack of hope that this generates in them. We turned to oral competence, usually secondary in our teaching, and guided the process of elaborating a TED-talk; its topic: an initiative, person or institution that generates hope. The steps were: definition of hope, choice of initiative, search for sources and research, elaboration and delivery of drafts, presentation to the class. In addition to the positive assessment by the three groups where it was carried out, most of the students, and significantly those with ADHD, obtained a higher grade than in the exams. We raise two main issues to be debated: the scarce relevance that the oral competence keeps receiving in our lessons, despite its pedagogical potential and its omnipresence in today’sworld; and the need for the sholar institution to take a stance on the reality in which it trains its students, from knowledge and hope.