• Richard Miller is an expert in child development and a professor at the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamic at Arizona State University.
• He says science has documented how teaching hope as both a cognitive function and a practice can be a powerful strategy for success.
• Miller believes that teaching children to imagine their goals encourages the brain to plan and prepare for future challenges and opportunities.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

On Erin Gruwell’s first day as a high school English teacher, she faced a classroom of 150 “at risk” freshmen. Most of these kids, statistically, were going to fail. They were tough, their young lives already defined by poverty, gangs, violence, and low expectations. These students, she wrote, knew nearly every “four-letter word” except one: hope.

Yet four years later, every one of her “at risk” students at Wilson High School in Long