Emily L Gibson

Emily L. Gibson is an educator and author who focuses on creating cultures of hope in schools, particularly for youth placed at risk and students living in poverty. She has worked in Vancouver Public Schools and has been an educator since 1992. Gibson earned her Ed.D. in School Improvement from Boise State University in 2011.

Gibson is the co-author, with Robert D. Barr, of Building a Culture of Hope: Enriching Schools With Optimism and Opportunity (Solution Tree Press, 2013), a book that offers a blueprint for transforming low-performing, high-poverty schools by addressing students’ social and emotional needs through four “seeds of hope”: optimism, belonging, pride/self-esteem, and purpose. She has also coauthored scholarly work on building cultures of hope for youth at risk and on exploring implicit biases against poverty in educational settings, further developing this framework for supporting students in challenging circumstances.