Make It Matter

I’ve always had questions about questions. Not the ones with right answers, but the ones that quietly follow us through our lives.

Who am I? Where do I belong? What am I here for?

Schools are remarkably good at asking young people what comes next. We ask them which courses they’ll take, which university they’ll choose, and, eventually, what they want to be when they grow up. They’re reasonable questions. Necessary, even. But I sometimes wonder whether they arrive before the questions that matter most.

Long before a young person can decide what they want to “do”, they’re trying to understand who they are. They’re wondering whether there’s a place for them, whether anyone notices what they bring, and whether the small, ordinary parts of themselves might one day become something the world needs. Identity doesn’t feel like the destination of that journey; it feels like the place from which every meaningful path begins.

Looking back through the pages of my old journals, I can see that I was searching for a way of understanding how identity, purpose, belonging, and contribution might one day weave themselves into a meaningful life. I’m fairly sure I haven’t finished that search. Perhaps none of us ever do.

What I do know is after years spent in classrooms, hallways, staff rooms, boardrooms, and countless conversations with remarkable young people, I’ve become less interested in helping students simply acquire content and far more interested in helping them discover connection. Connection to themselves. Connection to one another. Connection to their communities and the futures they hope to shape.

Knowledge matters, of course. But knowledge has always been a means rather than an end. Education, at its best, helps us make sense of ourselves so that we can make a meaningful difference beyond ourselves.

If we can help young people begin with identity, we might set them on a path to discover that the question, “What do I want to be when I grow up?”, becomes much easier to answer.