As I walk into Superintendent Blane McCann’s office, he hands me a bookmark-sized piece of paper that includes the following quote from Anne Frank:

“It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out.  Yet I keep them because in spite of everything, I still believe that people are good at heart.”

With McCann’s ideal being hope, and his belief the same as Frank’s, he took all that he observed his first year as Westside’s superintendent and culminated it into “Practicing Hope”.

“Hope” is this year’s district initiative. On Wednesday, teachers were encouraged to practice “NEXTing” during staff development. NEXTing consisted of district staff members walking around the community and “conversing and considering questions that will help them build their own vision of the future for themselves, their students, and our district,” which is quoted directly from the event’s promotional flyer.

Westside High School guidance counselor Lisa Hatch says the experience was beneficial.

“It was nice because our department [guidance] decided to all walk together,” Hatch said. “We talked to people about the future of Westside guidance and how to better serve our student population.”

McCann said the teachers are going to be brought together again to share ideas.

“We are going to bring them back into a large group within their own department where they can share, if they are willing to, what they’ve been thinking about with their colleagues,” McCann said. “We are also distributing cards among our teachers so they can write down some of the ideas they have, and we are going to ask that those be submitted to our Director of Learning Innovation & Professional Development to see if any themes emerge.”

Hatch said the guidance department reflected together after the event.

“When we [the guidance department] came back together, we sat down and answered one big question that really brought everything together,” Hatch said. “‘What are we looking forward to, how can others help and what do we need to make that happen?'”

McCann’s biggest inspiration behind practicing hope appeared to have come from Gallup’s Senior Scientist in Residence Shane Lopez.

“We asked Dr. Lopez to come speak to all of our staff members to kick off the school year,” McCann said “He talked about allowing our students to think about the future.”

Westside High School staff member Brian Stevens reflects on Lopez’ presentation.

“Although I’m not a fan of sitting and listening to people talk for 45 minutes, but I enjoyed Dr. Lopez’ presentation because he had a lot of good ideas and his style of presenting made it enjoyable,” Stevens said. “He delivered a good message to our staff.”

The district will be expanding on Lopez’ ideas.

“We didn’t want to have an event where we have the speaker come in and we [as a district] never come back and talk about it,” McCann said. “So, we wanted to have a “practice” event where our teachers got to experience some of the things we are asking our students to do, which is to go out and think about what’s next for them.”

McCann says he is fervently working to better the Westside district using Lopez’ ideals and beliefs concerning the future.

“I think about this district all the time,” McCann said “I think about ‘What kind of district do we want to have? What will the next generation of Westside Schools look like in 2020?’  We have to start thinking about that today to be in preparation for what we want to look like in the future.”