On agency, independence, and teaching students to find their own way

Today's students are caught between two narratives about their future: work hard and stay the traditional course, or brace for a world so uncertain that planning is futile.

The systems meant to support them aren't much clearer. Schools and workforce programs are either placing students on predefined pathways and hoping for the best, or scrambling to identify the careers that AI won't touch (as if anyone actually knows).

What will hold, I think, is this: the students who thrive will be the ones who can independently find their way in uncertainty. Who can evaluate their options, build the right connections, make decisions in ambiguity, and take their own first steps, all without waiting for someone to clear the way.

Student agency isn't a new idea, of course. But there's a growing gap between valuing agency as a concept and actually building the conditions for it to develop. Many of our new AI-powered systems, however well-intentioned, are designed to guide, curate, and decide on students' behalf. We have built elaborate infrastructure to reduce friction for young people, and in doing so may have reduced the opportunities for them to develop the very capacities they'll need most.

In an age when AI can generate a personalized pathway and any answer is a search away, it's tempting to believe we've solved the navigation problem - but we certainly have not. Students need the self-awareness and discernment to generate their own options and decide between them, and to change course as their environment evolves.

Above all, they'll need the ability to forge relationships with supporters and connectors along the way, and build their own community of guides to help them weather life's transitions.

Wayfinders will be a space for those stories, reflections and research.