Freqently Asked Questions

What is steamHouse?

steamHouse is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in Golden, Colorado that builds a developmental framework for human formation — grounded in what is known to be true about how people actually develop, and organized around four core principles, 78 Development Markers, and three channels: Club, Commons, and Chronicles.

In plainer terms: most programs that work on young people start by picking a destination — a list of values or skills they've decided people should reach. steamHouse starts from the person instead, and builds from what's actually known about how people develop. That difference is the whole point.

Who is steamHouse for?

The work centers on young people and the adults who develop them — families, educators, mentors, and youth-program leaders. But the framework describes formation across a whole life, not just adolescence, so the tools are useful to anyone trying to help a person become more conscious and purposeful, themselves included.

How is steamHouse different from social-emotional learning (SEL)?

SEL teaches emotional awareness and self-regulation as skills. That work is real, but it stops short of purpose, worldview, and action. steamHouse runs the full stack — from what a person cares about, to how they make sense of the world, to what they actually do. The deeper difference is the starting point: SEL, like most approaches, picks the destination first (the skills or competencies to instill). steamHouse refuses to pick a destination on a young person's behalf and starts from the person — helping them discover what they authentically care about and develop the capacity to pursue it consciously.

Where does the framework come from?

It isn't invented from a founder's preferences. It's assembled from where independent, well-established developmental traditions already agree — convergent findings across six developmental frameworks, including the Center for Curriculum Redesign, the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, Philosophy for Children, Project Zero, and Harlem Village Academies. Underneath that sits a base of empirical fact about how humans develop, drawn from cognitive science, developmental psychology, educational research, and neuroscience. The framework's job is to surface what these sources hold in common, not to add one more opinion to the pile.

What are the 78 Development Markers?

The 78 Development Markers are concrete, observable capacities a person grows toward — the framework's answer to "what does development actually look like, in practice?" They're organized into three kinds: 17 Stars, 31 Lenses, and 30 Keys. Together they make development visible and trackable instead of vague.

What are the four core principles?

Four, and in this order: Reflective Thinking (examining your own thinking improves it — consciousness can be developed), Personal Agency (you are the author of your life and have the capacity to choose), Mutual Respect (other people are real, with their own agency and dignity), and Objective Reason (reality exists independent of our wishes, and truth can be approached through honest inquiry). They aren't four separate virtues but aspects of one integrated way of being. They're also the only thing the organization commits to normatively — steamHouse takes no position on the deeper questions where thoughtful people legitimately disagree.

What are the three channels — Club, Commons, and Chronicles?

Club is local community practice: the framework lived out in a real place with real people (and, at the Golden site, animals and the outdoors). Commons is the curriculum and tools — the framework made usable by others. Chronicles is the narrative world: stories that carry the principles in a form that shapes intuition and aspiration, not just understanding. Three channels, one framework.

Who founded steamHouse?

Brenton Burnett. He taught science and STEM in Colorado's Cherry Creek Schools for 22 years before leaving to build steamHouse full-time. More on the founding and why it exists is on the founder page.

Is steamHouse a school, a program, or something else?

Something else. steamHouse doesn't replace school and isn't a single program with a fixed activity and a time slot. It's a developmental framework plus the channels that carry it — a lens that works inside things people are already doing, at home, in school, and in the community. The framework is the product; the channels are how it reaches people.

How is AI used in steamHouse's work?

Openly, and as a tool under human direction. The most accurate description is human-directed, AI-drafted, human-edited: a person sets the scope, structure, source selection, and editorial judgment, and Claude (Anthropic's language model) does substantial drafting and synthesis within those constraints. steamHouse avoids both "AI-authored" (the architecture and judgment are human) and "AI-assisted" (that understates the drafting). It also keeps an honest ledger about status: the research foundation is real, but the books are still in process — strong drafts, most not yet through full human editing. There's a deeper point, too: how a person uses a powerful tool is itself a formation question — are you still the conscious author of your own choices? The fuller account of how is in the methods brief; the why is in The Case for Conscious Humans in the Age of AI.

How can I get involved?

Start at Get Involved. Depending on what fits, that routes to a Club, to the Commons curriculum and tools, or to partnership if you run a program, school, or organization that wants to work with the framework.

Where can I read more?

The Primer is the whole project in plain language on one page. The about page is the shorter door in. For the framework's reasoning in long form, see the Books Ecosystem; for the person behind it, the founder page.