HOPE
By: Tim Prikkel | Principal of Hebron Elementary School
Educating kids is a long game. The seeds that are planted when a child is 5 years old and wants to be an astronaut, fire fighter, ballerina, or professional athlete will not be fully realized for over a decade. The world will change drastically in that amount of time. The world that exists when a child is in elementary school will be near unrecognizable by the time they graduate from high school. However, what I have found will not change is the feeling of safety, security, belonging, and most importantly hope that was nurtured while a child was in elementary school. To me, it is that hope that I believe will change the world for the better.
We build hope in many ways. Imaginative play teaches children that they can hope to be anything they want to be. The sky is the limit and though the desire to be a dinosaur is a possibility at five, the reality is that by fostering that hope we may have inspired a future paleontologist. The hope for peace and harmony in society is a constant theme in elementary school as we seek to build communities founded on respect and responsibility where conflicts are mediated and feelings are validated. Speaking of feelings, elementary schools build hope for an emotionally stable society where we develop socially and cognitively appropriate supports for processing and handling our emotions. In elementary schools we also build the hope that no one has to be alone. Whether it is buddy benches or making sure everyone has a partner to work with, elementary teachers foster unity and togetherness in the hope that one day group projects won’t be so brutal, and that we can all find someone to rely on.
While we build hope in students, there are also many things that I hope for and the hope of which keeps me going in this profession. I hope for the next generation of educators to take on the calling of being hope builders. I hope for a society that values education and educators knowing that these formative years need to be valued and invested in. I hope that the world we see tomorrow is better than the world we saw today. Most of all, I hope that every student will feel safe and secure at school as they develop their hope for tomorrow.
The hope that we are building has become even more personal for me as a parent with kids in elementary school. As my own kids face a future of uncertainty and change, I hope that they will have the seeds of their future planted in an elementary school. I hope that they will know that the sky is the limit and though the world might seem like a scary and daunting place, they can truly have the grit and determination to overcome the obstacles that come their way all while being kind and building unity.
As the Porter County Birth 2 School Alliance seeks to find ways as a group to connect school corporations with children from prenatal to age 3, in Hebron we are actively looking for ways to spread our hope for the future to this age group. We are looking to help bring our hope for a better future to these kids as they become Hawks for life. Our goal is to create a community space where our Birth to School age community can come and get connected with the school, each other, and community resources to help prepare their children to be students. We have done this with age 3-5 for several years through our Little Hawks Preschool and look forward to what this will look like with our prenatal to 3 community.
I love what I do. The look on my face after a tough day or the stories of difficult moments that I share with my wife might betray that sentiment, but I truly do love being an elementary school principal. My name is Tim Prikkel, I’m the principal of Hebron Elementary School, and if you remember nothing else about me, remember that I have HOPE.