Wayfinder is a tool that is designed for use in schools but with a focus on the world outside of that space. The idea being to offer some guidance to young people on how to manage themselves and how to live — preparing them for the future.
The goal here is to give students durable skills that help them thrive well after graduation time. From self-awareness and adaptability to collaboration and empathy, all the skills learned here can be truly valuable.
This is a useful option for teachers looking to go beyond conventional SEL offerings. This is more like a bridge between academic programs and real-world experience. Everything is research-grounded, designed for education, and made to work across grade levels.
This guide aims to lay out all you need to know about Wayfinder to see if it could work in your class.
What is Wayfinder?
Wayfinder is an offering that aims to build foundational skills for young people, to help them achieve lifelong success.
This is a research-backed and educator-designed curriculum that is made to fit into a teacher’s setup already. As such, this offers a selection of tools that can be used from primary school to college, in class or alongside counseling, as needed.
Aimed primarily at K-12, this tries to help build confidence, adaptability, and a sense of purpose — essentially ensuring students don’t lose their way in life.
This means helping kids think about decision-making, interpersonal communication, self-awareness, purposeful leadership, and social-emotional development.
Wayfinder can be used across a range of platforms including advisory classes, electives, academic integration, extracurriculars, and even in support and intervention contexts, such as counseling or multi‑tier support systems (MTSS).
How does Wayfinder work?
Wayfinder is built for flexibility with an ability to slot into a variety of school structures. But it also uses structured assessments, called Waypoints, as a way to measure student growth and monitor core skill competencies over time.
Schools and districts can use this during advisory periods, electives or specialist classes, regular academic classes, or even extracurricular and morning‑meeting time. That should make it a good fit within a wide range of school constraints and approaches.
Wayfinder does offer specific targeted interventions, focusing on areas such as chronic absenteeism, bullying prevention, executive functioning, digital citizenship, and restorative practices.
Specific assessment options are available to track growth in core competencies over time — skills such as self‑awareness, agency, collaboration, empathy, adaptability, and purpose. All with real-time data analysis to help educators identify strengths and areas that need more support.
Modules extend to career and college focus, plus professional learning and staff support.
What are the best Wayfinder features?
Wayfinder is a dedicated way to focus on learning beyond the academic core content, in a manner that actively helps students prepare not only for the future but specifically their future.
The fact that this is super flexible and embeddable makes for a far easier choice for educators and institutions, when it comes to adding this to the list of tools that can fit into the system as it currently works. The ability to use this across grade levels and class types also helps with uptake ease.
The data-driven focus helps measure progress over time — something that can be hard to find in traditional SEL programs. This can really help with effective targeted interventions.
By using a focused and measurable approach, Wayfinder can be utilized as a way to help with ongoing issues for schools such as absenteeism, behavior, and disengagement. Something that can be applied on a class, school, or district-wide scale.
For older students, the modules on career preparation, financial skills, and life pathways directly address the gap many schools struggle to fill. This can bridge academic learning with real-world preparedness.
How much does Wayfinder cost?
Wayfinder does not share its pricing publicly. Instead it simply says that pricing follows a “contact us” style approach in which you schedule a demo and work it out from there.
While that’s not very transparent, it does also mean there could be a level of adaptability to suit the needs of the buyer. The cost likely depends on a variety of factors including number of students, which grade levels are covered, extent of use, and support or training requirements.
Wayfinder best tips and tricks
Alignment
Use Wayfinder in advisory periods, morning meetings or elective slots to avoid overburdening timetables. Because it’s designed to slot into multiple formats you can tailor its deployment to your school schedule.
Tracking
Deliver Waypoints assessments at regular intervals to monitor class‑level or school‑level trends. Use formative assessments in between to catch dips or emerging issues, and adapt your interventions accordingly.
Target
If you have students struggling with attendance, behavior, social or emotional issues or disengagement — the MTSS or counseling use‑case of Wayfinder may help. Use the platform’s flexibility to tailor interventions rather than applying a one size fits all approach.