"Now I know that meritocracy and the American dream are myths": employing critical hope in a teacher pipeline program serving minoritized high school students

The purpose of this teacher action research project is to examine the perspectives of high school youth as they experience an intensive, 45-hours summer course geared toward developing and strengthening students critical consciousness as future teachers. This research study centers on a teacher pipeline program called the Future Educators Program (FEP) focused on preparing a diverse group of students interested in the teaching profession. Employing tenets of critical hope, such as hokey hope and Socratic hope, the teacher-researcher seeks to examine how students make sense of educational inequality as it relates to race and class. Findings from this study illustrate the ways participants debunk misconceptions linked to hokey hope and exercise Socratic hope in their critical self-reflections with regards to their lived and racialized experiences. The author concludes with implications for the recruitment and retention of minoritized youth as future teachers for social justice.