About HEART™
Five human abilities we want children to practice on purpose.
HEART™ is GrowMate™'s competency framework for observing growth across projects, group work, presentations, and reflection.
Why These Five
A practical framework for human development
HEART™ draws on the OECD Learning Compass 2030 and the P21 Framework for 21st Century Learning. We use those ideas as a starting point, then organize them around the behaviors we can actually observe in GrowMate™ projects.
The question behind the framework is simple: when AI can handle more information and more routine tasks, what do children still need to practice themselves?
HEART™
The five competencies
Human Collaboration
Work with people, not just beside them.
Build connections, take on a role, read the group, work through disagreement, and take responsibility for shared progress.
What we look for: trust-building, participation, perspective-taking, conflict navigation, and shared responsibility.
Expression & Communication
Make an idea understandable.
Express ideas clearly, understand other people, ask when something is unclear, respond well, and adjust to the audience or situation.
What we look for: clarity, listening, questions, response, and audience awareness.
Action & Problem Solving
Turn an idea into progress.
Start, define the problem, plan a path, follow through, adjust when needed, and own the result.
What we look for: initiative, problem definition, planning, follow-through, iteration, and ownership.
Resilience & Self-management
Keep working when things get uncomfortable.
Manage emotions under pressure, stay steady through difficulty, recover from setbacks, and build habits that support independent work.
What we look for: regulation, persistence, recovery, focus, and growing independence.
Thinking & Creativity
Ask better questions and make better judgments.
Ask useful questions, reason from evidence, test assumptions, look from another angle, and combine ideas into something new.
What we look for: questioning, evidence, logic, perspective shifts, originality, and synthesis.
20 Development Indicators
Soft skills need concrete evidence
Each HEART™ area has four development indicators. We record specific behavior instead of giving a vague score.
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Evidence comes from mentor observation, parent documentation, and the child's own reflection. The goal is a useful growth record, not another test.
From Framework to Practice
HEART™ tells us what to look for. The program gives children a place to practice it.
See how the GrowLoop™ cycle, small groups, projects, and mentors work together each month.
Explore Our Program