Giving Compass' Take:

• The QUESTion Project encourages teenagers to reflect on their values future direction to ultimately find their sense of purpose. 

• How does social-emotional learning tackle concepts such as purpose in education for young people?

• Read about why it matters that teens are reading less. 

Welcome to the QUESTion Project, a semester-long elective designed to give adolescents a space in which to wrestle with big questions about who they are, where they are headed and what matters most in their journey through life.

It starts with giving kids the space and time to reflect on their values, and from there, thinking about their future direction, the idea of purpose and then having opportunities to act on it.

The three-year-old program, now offered in six public schools (five in New York City and one in Los Angeles) is part of a movement within a movement. In the past decade or so, a growing number of schools have adopted curricula on social and emotional learning, including an emphasis on growth mindsets (as defined by psychologist Carol Dweck of Stanford) and developing a stick-to-it quality called grit (as explored by Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania).

The QUESTion Project  and like-minded programs such as the Future Project and Project Wayfinder focus on something a little more abstract and, arguably, profound: finding a sense of purpose.

Read the full article on purpose by Claudia Wallis at The Hechinger Report