HOPE in the Classrooms - Again?

Some parents have asked if their students need to take HOPE classes every year. Often students will say to our educators, “I have already had a HOPE class. Isn’t this the same material every year?” The answer is very simple. The HOPE Program offers classes in all grades 6-12 because students need to hear the message. The idea that “Choices Have Consequences” is worth repeating. In fact, I need to be reminded of it almost daily as an adult.

Although HOPE classes do have common threads that may sound the same to students, the information increases in depth and maturity and builds a comprehensive message. For example, in the Choosing the Best series, an early middle school class will discuss the importance of setting boundaries with friends. The lessons focus on helping young teens learn to stand on their own in situations particular to in the middle school years. This is a time when it is normal for a young person to want to be seen as independent, yet so many pre-teens long to fit in with the crowd. Helping middle school students form proper boundaries with friends at an early age will enable them to form their own beliefs about what is right and wrong and have the courage to hold tightly to it.

Relationships with the opposite sex are discussed, along with the consequences of trying drugs and alcohol, but not to the degree as in later high school HOPE classes. The Choosing the Best curriculum for later grades presents a more detailed reality of how the absence of personal boundaries leads to increased premarital sex, drug and alcohol use, sexually transmitted diseases, and greater struggles in achieving future goals.

It is the desire of the HOPE Program to be an ever present voice of truth in students’ lives. We are not content to let the half-truths and out-right lies that are a constant barrage of background noise in our culture have the last say in the lives of our youth. When students ask, “Haven’t we already talked about this?” I answer, “Yes! And it is of such value that we are going to talk about it again! And again. And Again.” Oh, how desperately I wish someone had been persistent with this message in my early life.