York House School is very excited to share with you our launch of Project Wayfinder in Career and Life Connections with our Grade 8 and Grade 9 students on December 4, 2020. Here at YHS, we have an incredible opportunity to learn from—and work with—Project Wayfinder, a team from Stanford d. School, who have developed a program and a toolkit that, “equips students with skills, knowledge, and confidence to become purposeful navigators of their lives.”
Inspired by practices of traditional wayfinding techniques and navigating one’s way in the natural world, Project Wayfinder provides students with opportunities to think about their own individual purpose and how that connects to their ‘greater why’ as they explore their personal identity—and individual strengths—and to discover what deeply matters to them through a variety of exercises and activities.
In my role as Career-Life Connections and Capstone Coordinator at YHS, I believe that navigating one’s own personal and career-life journey must first begin with knowing and gaining an understanding of who you are as an individual. This idea of ‘knowing yourself’ is at the very heart of YHS Learning Framework and plays an important role in preparing our students for their futures in becoming ethical global citizens. By engaging in reflective practice and using self-assessments in the Project Wayfinder toolkit, students will develop an awareness of their own personal strengths, preferences, and skills—a curricular competency of the BC curriculum—that will serve as the foundation of our YHS Career and Life Connections (CLC) program in Grades 8 and 9 as students develop their own journey, with purpose.
It is important to note that these toolkits have been provided by YHS and that students should keep them at school (unless told otherwise) and not to take them home (the cost to students/or families to replace missing toolkits is $50).
If you have any questions about Project Wayfinder, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Jaclyn Murray
Career-Life Connections and Capstone Coordinator
