July 25, 2025 | Nick Gross

Fostering Future-Ready Minds: How Hope, Engagement, and Find Your Grind Transform Learning in Spokane Public Schools

As the Chief of Student Success for Spokane Public Schools I am always on the lookout for technology solutions that come alongside our awesome educators to engage students in concepts, ideas, and resources that build hope and develop a strong sense of self-efficacy. I met the Find Your Grind (FYG) team via a virtual demonstration after a colleague met the team at a conference. 

I was immediately drawn to the engaging design of their interface and all the student-centered features they have to provide career mentors, career lessons, and very rich underlying metrics and data that show their impact in our classrooms. It was immediately clear that students, across a wide range of learning needs, would be able to engage and find it valuable.

After a full school year and a half of piloting and implementing, it’s become very clear that our students love FYG and really that should be the end of this blog post as a testimonial. If your students love engaging with content that helps them aspire to succeed in reaching their career goals and you can see that through the data then that is everything, but I’ll continue to try and connect some other dots that we often reflect on as educators. 

In a landscape of numerous priorities and continuing efforts to support our students we often think about ideas like student engagement, progression of student learning, and instilling hope in our students. I bring up these three things specifically with Find Your Grind because it’s very clear that they directly impact these areas. 

Student Engagement is EVERYTHING

Student engagement, defined by McREL International as “a condition of emotional, social, and intellectual readiness to learn characterized by curiosity, participation, and the drive to learn more,” is critical for both academic and social-emotional outcomes. FYG’s ability to highlight student growth and collect student feedback suggests it is creating an environment where students feel more connected to their learning and their future. 

As of the end of this school year, we had 862 students complete over 65,000 badge activities. That really feels like exceptional engagement from our students and teachers. It also feels like a valuable picture of what a school district’s Return on Investment (ROI) can look like from a collaborative partner like the Find Your Grind Team.

Empowering Educators, Transforming Culture

Teachers have reflected on FYG’s ease of use and its broader impact. The curriculum supports district goals like SEL, Portrait of a Graduate, and Whole Child initiatives, contributing to cultural shifts and new conversations among staff and students. When teachers feel engaged and supported, it becomes easier for them to help students feel engaged with school. This creates a nurturing learning environment that is both demanding and supportive.

The emphasis on relationship-building is paramount in fostering hope and engagement. Teachers who take the time to understand students’ passions, struggles, and interests can build strong connections, making learning more effective and exciting. This supportive environment, combined with the focus on SEL, helps students feel safe enough to learn and explore, which is a prerequisite for higher-level reasoning and goal pursuit.

I have students in a classroom with a variety of skills be able to stand up in the front of their classroom and confidently speak about their career goals, but not only their goals, they back it up with specific information from Find Your Grind like educational or degree/certification requirements alongside average salaries and other overall job outlook facts. It was really notable to see a variety of students from academically driven to introverted and shy be able to do this classroom career poster “speech” activity – and I credit the teacher’s skill to create a safe space, but also for the communication and coordination that FYG provides for the teacher’s preparation of the lessons alongside the student’s ability to see the action they take and how it supports their learning and goal-setting. 

Data-Driven Pathways to Success

A key strength of FYG is its capacity to provide lifestyle and survey data that enables educators to personalize learning. This data allows us to make informed decisions and gain valuable student insights from formative assessments. Measuring engagement, as suggested by research, is crucial for understanding how students are connecting with their learning and for informing interventions. By collecting data on students’ aspirations and progress, Spokane Public Schools can better identify and support students in developing their personal pathways and agency, especially for those who might be experiencing low hope.

This is a great sample of what I can see (and this is just one of 32 widgets on my FYG Dashboard)

Continue What Works!

As a district, Spokane Public Schools has felt the positive impact of working with Find Your Grind prioritizing future-ready learning, social-emotional learning (SEL), and career exploration. This vision is not just about academic achievement, but about cultivating resilient, engaged, and hopeful students prepared for their lives beyond the classroom. Our implementation of the Find Your Grind (FYG) platform plays a crucial role in achieving our ambitious goals, serving as a powerful tool to enhance both student engagement and a hope-centered educational approach.

We look forward to more teacher and students engaging in the platform next year and also for any future updates from Find Your Grind as they continue to place such a heavy focus on user feedback to iterate their features.