Education with purpose: Turning aptitude into direction, readiness, and impact

Disrupt Education x YouScience Podcast Series — Episode 2 Recap

Most students don’t leave school unprepared because they lack potential—they leave unprepared because no one helped them connect who they are to where they’re going. Episode 2 of the YouScience + Disrupt Education series digs into that connection point: purpose.

Hosts Peter Hostrawser and Alli Dahl are joined again by work-based learning educator and specialist Jason Van Nus to explore what happens when students understand their aptitudes, and how that understanding becomes the engine that drives motivation, relevance, career confidence, and community workforce strength.

As Jason puts it early in the episode:

“Educators are always looking for easy solutions, this is it. Stop looking. It’s easy and it’s effective. YouScience is easy and good, and those two rarely intersect in education.”

Students can’t build a confident future on guesswork. They need the intersection of aptitude awareness + real-world purpose. Episode 2 shows exactly what that looks like.

Key themes from Episode 2

• Purpose turns learning into action, not just compliance.
• Aptitude awareness gives students vision and direction.
• Data eliminates waste for students, systems, and employers.
• When students see who they are, they engage differently.
• Purposeful pathways strengthen whole communities and workforce pipelines.

Education with purpose is more than a diploma

Jason breaks it down simply:

“Vision is where we’re going. Mission is how we get there. YouScience gives students vision, then we build the mission.”

Purpose is clarity. It’s the shift from schedule filling to intentional planning. From “pick an elective” to “choose the next step in your career path.” From students drifting through the system to students taking ownership of their future.

Education with purpose means:

• Students aren’t choosing classes based on convenience or friends.
• Pathways match natural cognitive strengths.
• Teachers aren’t hoping for engagement — they spark it with relevance.
• Students stop asking “Why do I need this?” because the “why” is visible.

When a student sees how geometry builds welding skills—or how protocol thinking connects to entrepreneurship—school changes from something that happens to them into something they participate in.

The moment a student sees their future, everything changes

Purpose lands hardest when it becomes personal. Jason shares a powerful example:

One student dreamed of becoming a pilot but local opportunities were limited. Rather than give up, Jason pulled up his YouScience results.

What the student discovered wasn’t just who he could be, but what he could build.

His aptitudes showed strengths in:

• protocol and system thinking
• entrepreneurship
• process improvement
• data awareness

“So instead of waiting for an opportunity,” Jason explains, “he created one.”

He launched a mobile detailing business, built a scheduling app, became a top-performing work-based learning student and hired another student using YouScience data as his recruitment tool.

This student became, as far as Jason can confirm, the first student in Georgia history to be both a work-based learning student and an employer.

“Everyone else was looking for an opportunity. He made one because YouScience helped him see what he could do.”

This is education with purpose. Not worksheets. Not guesswork. Agency. Ownership. Momentum.

Why purpose increases engagement and readiness

The data backs it up clearly:

• 77% of students say they would have been more engaged if they understood their aptitudes earlier.
• 72% felt only moderately or not at all prepared for life after high school.
• 86% of employers say new hires need more training.
• 90% of employers say strong school-industry partnerships are critical to talent pipelines.

These numbers don’t show lack of effort, they show lack of alignment. Students aren’t disengaged because they don’t care. They’re disengaged because school feels disconnected from real life.

YouScience bridges that gap by helping students:

• see what they’re naturally wired to do well
• explore aligned careers early
• make academic choices anchored in purpose
• advocate for themselves with confidence

When students understand themselves, learning stops feeling like a maze and starts feeling like a map.

Or as Jason puts it: “An X on the map doesn’t just tell students where to dig, it tells them where not to waste time digging.”

Purpose doesn’t just empower students — it strengthens communities

Jason is blunt about the disconnect many industries feel toward education:

“I don’t think industry trusts education right now. We’ve broken too many promises.”

But he believes YouScience is the fix: “YouScience is the band-aid, the intervention, that bridges the gap between education and industry.”

In his community, he’s working with employers, workforce partners, and development authorities to use YouScience data to:

• pipeline early talent based on cognitive strengths
• understand emerging workforce trends
• reduce hiring guesswork
• create internships with better fit and retention
• track competency and success over time

Imagine workforce planning where students aren’t random applicants, instead they’re known, understood, and cultivated with purpose.

Purpose fuels readiness. Readiness fuels workforce strength. Workforce strength fuels economic growth.

This isn’t theory, it’s happening.

From exposure → direction → purpose → success

Episode 1 showed why exposure matters.
Episode 2 shows what happens when exposure meets purpose.

It looks like:

• students building businesses
• welders understanding geometry
• interns placed based on cognitive fit
• employers seeing future workforce clearly
• students gaining identity, not just a diploma

Education with purpose doesn’t add something new to teachers’ plates — it replaces uncertainty with clarity.

Jason said it best: “It should be national news, the fact that this is changing kids’ lives.” 

And that’s why we’re telling these stories.

What’s next in the series

Episode 3 moves from classrooms to districts, highlighting transformation at scale in Ohio, and how aptitude-driven programs reshape communities from the ground up.

Stay with us — this conversation is accelerating.

Watch or listen to Episode 2:
YouTube: 408 Education with Purpose — Connecting Learning to Lifelong Success – YouScience Series Ep 2
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/38176u6A1qa3AWG2zkPaal?si=eb866c98cd5a486e
Disrupt Education Page: https://disrupteducationpodcast.com/ 

Explore the ongoing series & student success stories:
https://www.youscience.com/disrupteducation-podcast/