The QUESTion Project Welcomes Students – and Teachers – to their First Day of School.
Open Future Institute wants to share how excited we are to get this new year underway. In fact, it may have seemed that QUESTion Class teachers and Open Future Institute co-facilitators were more eager than [...]
QUESTion Project Expands to New School in Los Angeles.
The Question Project is back and making an even bigger presence in the Los Angeles area, expanding into the Alliance Bloomfield High School and training the new teachers coming into the Alliance Marine High School. [...]
QUESTion Class Connects Students from Both Sides of the Country.
Two classrooms on two different oceans, sharing one computer screen. This semester, high school students taking the QUESTion Project in LA and NYC traded stories, asked big questions, and exchanged popular lingo from their cities in [...]
When Holland Travels to the Bronx to QUESTion Together.
On one of the last, chilly spring mornings in New York City, excited Dutch students waited, up and ready, to finally meet face-to-face with the Bronx native pen-pals they had been writing to. Every year, [...]
An Exciting Civic Engagement Partnership.
A group of our QUESTion Ambassadors from 3 our of schools in the Bronx, have started a joint campaign with the District Office, as they realize their civic responsibility and agency in their communities. With [...]
QUESTion Day Inspires All.
A few weeks ago, during a QUESTion Day assembly at one of our partner schools in the Bronx, a group of students stood on stage and spoke to an audience of 500 peers about their experience in [...]
Reimagining Student Leadership in the Classroom
Students are leading the QUESTion Class! Over the course of this semester, more and more students are taking on greater responsibility in the classroom as teaching assistants. This role, however, is not new. During the [...]
Open Future Institute Goes West to Partner with Alliance MIT
We have some big news: the Open Future Institute is expanding to California! In July we completed a very moving training with ten teachers from Alliance Marine – Innovation & Technology, a public charter school [...]
QUESTion Class Alumni Engage Incoming Freshmen with the Hayden Summer Bridge Program
“Your team did a wonderful job of exposing our incoming freshmen to new ways of thinking about themselves, others and the world around them through the QUESTion workshops. We are excited to see how this [...]
Student Ambassadors Bring the QUESTion Project to Amherst College
Passing along an early green of summer trees, we reviewed our presentation one last time. Amherst College had invited us to present the QUESTion Project to a group of alumni interested in the holistic, human [...]
A day in the Question Class in the South Bronx
Students began class by organizing their chairs into a circle. When everyone got quiet, the teacher silently stepped into the spotlight, placed an envelope on the floor, and then walked away. In the silence that [...]
What happens when the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics’ Pink Ladies meet with BCSMen to discuss big life questions?
The answer: incredible communication. “How do boys feel about girls’ insecurities?” “Why do guys not show sensitivity?” “Why don’t you tell me what the problem is instead of ignoring me?” “What does it mean to [...]
First QUESTion Day at TAPCo reaches 700
Magic happens when 700 high school and middle school students come together to explore life’s biggest questions! And, the magic yields power when our biggest questions are part of a larger conversation. We were thrilled [...]
Three Schools in Fall 2016!
The most exciting chapter in the QUESTion Project story has begun. As the fall 2016 semester kicks off, the QUESTion Class is running in three different public high schools in the South Bronx with over 330 [...]
QUESTion Community Labs Grow and Spark Dialogue
As part of our summer internship program, our high school QUESTion Ambassadors facilitated two QUESTion Community Labs with several dozen students from the Boys' Club of New York (ISP Summer Prep Program) and the Central [...]
To Reach a Younger Audience… QUESTion Goes to Elementary School!
We recently reached our youngest group of QUESTioners, ever! And what we found couldn't be more eye-opening. When we were first asked to engage a room full of seventy 5th graders at Bronx Charter School for Better Learning, [...]
Student Ambassadors Lead Inspiring Workshop At Global Kids
Five of our star QUESTion Student Ambassadors came together last week to facilitate a 3-hour workshop for their peers at Global Kids, a nonprofit organization that provides global education and leadership development programs for NYC-based youth. This was one [...]
Student Ambassadors Take QUESTion Out of the Classroom
As our QUESTion alumni family grows, so do our program offerings. We've launched our first-ever afterschool QUESTion Ambassador Program for students who have taken the Course and wish to stay involved. Their voices are reaching beyond the classroom as [...]
Model High School In Its Second Year
A new semester is underway at our model school, Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics. Now in our second year of partnership, a team of newly trained BCSM teachers have become QUESTion Facilitators and stand [...]
The QUESTion Project: We Are Busy this Summer!
At Open Future Institute Headquarters, we have an international hive this Summer...from India to Egypt, to the Bronx....we are so happy to have with us 13 interns, in addition to our staff. Srikanth who is [...]
Bronx Center of Science and Math: An Inspiring Story
We successfully concluded our first year at the Bronx Center of Science and Math this past June. We ran three daily elective classes, and the impact on the students, as we can see from our [...]
Ellis Island Medal of Honor
Gerard Senehi, Founder of Open Future Institute, was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor last week. NECO, the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations, sponsors the award, which is presented annually to American citizens who have [...]
TEDx Talk: Why Big Questions Matter
Our Student Coordinator, Josh, just returned from giving a TED Talk at the TEDxFSU conference at Florida State University. In his talk he spoke about why big questions matter in education, and how his own explorations into big [...]
Welcome OFI Netherlands: Our Newest Chapter
We are thrilled to announce our first international chapter in the Netherlands! Led by our dear friends Florence Fabbricotti and Chris Hollanders with an Advisory Board of three (Susanne de Neeve, Bas de Jong and [...]
The QUESTion Project Begins in the South Bronx, NYC
We have formed a wonderful partnership with the Bronx Center for Science and Mathematics, a public school in the in the South Bronx, NY. This is a great school that has been selected as a [...]
Second QUESTion CO-Creative Lab Sparks Curiosity at Florida State University
We just completed our second Co-Creative Lab at Florida State University. This lab was entirely co-led by two of our student facilitators, Josh Mesnik and Zach Kaye. It provided a structured forum for all the participants to explore [...]
Graduate Students Get a Taste of The QUESTion Project at a Daylong Summit
At Eastern Mennonite Graduate School this November, we explored what it would take to make the QUESTion Project available to graduate students. In this 6-hour co-creative session, titled the QUESTion Summit for Social Change and Conflict [...]
The QUESTion Project at PACE UNIVERSITY, NYC
Our team facilitated QUESTion workshops at Pace University's lower Manhattan campus. These were done with students enrolled in undergraduate environmental science courses taught by adjunct professor Lee Frankel-Goldwater. The workshops were met with enthusiasm and [...]
The QUESTion Project in …Oman!
Yes... Oman! We had the wonderful opportunity to lead a QUESTion workshop with 40 students at the National Hospitality School, a vocational school in Muscat, the capital of Oman. The students were from Oman as [...]
OFI Founder Presents at ACMHE Conference
Open Future Institute Founder Gerard Senehi recently delivered a thematic presentation at the annual conference of the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education (ACMHE) which took place in Seattle, Washington, this October. His presentation, titled [...]
International Youth Explore Big Questions at Miracle Corners of the World
QUESTion engaged with youth from around the world in an interactive session for Miracle Corners of the World's youth leadership retreat in Vermont this past July. Our FSU student leader, Josh Mesnik, traveled to the [...]
Summer Internship
We welcomed five interns to join our team to refine the content and core messages of our QUESTion Project. We now have a program that's more age appropriate, experience-based, and incredibly engaging. The new curriculum will [...]