About Notes on Hope

Welcome to Notes on Hope! I'm Alicia Stoller and I'm so glad you're here. I’ve been an educator for over twenty years, working as a classroom teacher, a graduate instructor, and a school leader. I’m also a mom to an awesome teen kiddo, who is so much fun to hang out with and gives me hope for the future.

In the years since my son was born, the world has felt increasingly fragile in so many ways. Holding onto hope has seemed like a white knuckle effort at times, and yet fighting to sustain a sense of hope that feels rugged and impactful is the only way I can find to make sense of my own reality or entrust my son to our uncertain future. In the words of James Baldwin, speaking from his own fragile moment in history,

“I never have been in despair about the world. Enraged. I’ve been enraged by the world, but never despair. I cannot afford despair…you can’t tell the children that there is no hope.”

I’m not interested in a blind hope that allows us to close our eyes to difficult realities. The hope I try to stitch together for myself, for my son, for the children and families I work with, and for you in these notes, grows out of a commitment to fully embrace both joy and heartbreak and to find optimism in compassion.

Notes on Hope is meant to be a soft landing place for reflection on the work of holding hope in our worried world and parenting toward a better future. Writing these notes helps me stay tender and brave and I hope that reading them does the same for you.

xo,
Alicia