Remake Learning Lunch & Learn: Storytelling 101
Below you will find the raw and unedited email follow-up message sent to attendees from a 2018 Remake Learning Lunch & Learn. We hope you find these conversations interesting and appreciate our ad hoc public archive. Interested in learning more about the Remake Learning Network? Please visit remakelearning.org
Gratitude
I’d like to start by thanking Root + All (aka the Remake Learning “Ol’ Man of the Woods,” Ryan Coon and the tireless, fearless, and frank Arielle Evans), for their continued thought partnership, drive to learn, document, and share.
Big, huge, love-able, hug-able thanks to the crew at APOST!
And snaps to that food from Big Burrito. Mmmm
As always, thank YOU for attending. We’d really appreciate your feedback.
Check out more opportunities to learn and connect below!
—
Ani Martinez
Field Director
Remake Learning Network
remakelearning.org
Twitter: @theAniMartinez
In Case You Missed It
This is a brief summary of what happened. You’ll find the full and unedited notes below my signature.
- You can (re)watch the event in its entirety on YouTube. Click here.
- You can review the slides. Click here.
- You can review, print, and use the worksheets. Click here.
- You can review the Center for Story-based Strategy 101 handout. Click here.
Ryan and Arielle have been running the Remake Learning communications engine for a long time. While they’ve learned alot, this workshop provided them with a new opportunity to reflect back on the first year of running Root + All. It was also a space to #LearninPublic while sharing some of their most concentrated learnings.
So wait, what is Root + All? R+A is an organization that helps local and national people, projects, and organizations think strategically about their communications, whether that’s documentation, thought process, and in our case stories. R+A spun out of The Sprout Fund after years of work stewarding Remake Learning and other Pittsburgh-based initiatives. R+A still facilitates the Remake Learning Communication’s work, including the blog, social media, and documentation (which sounds simple, but trust me it’s #complicated). Check them out!
They started this particular conversation with a question to you: What Stories Do YOU Want to Tell? And we heard some compelling answers, but a few themes emerged:
- We heard lots around the idea of conveying importance (of out-of-school time, of technology, of parents, etc)
- We heard a little bit about impact, or why people should know about something (policy, deadlines etc)
- We even heard a desire for narrative shifting, and how we might compel a reader (to change their mind, to acknowledge an issue, or change a reputation)
Arielle continued with her personal WHY Story: “Marketing has existed for a long time, but we think STORY is having a moment.”
So back up, aren’t stories like one of the most ancient things humans do? YES, that’s right. Stories are how we make sense of the world. But, and this is of course tongue-and-cheek, stories right now are also nine-tenths of reality. If you don’t tell your story, someone else will. Story helps connect to funding, to public opinion, to our emotions. Story is finding more formal avenues into the marketing system, and the learning space is not divorced from that.
So if Remake Learning is its members, story can help paint the picture of what engagement looks like. And for Remake Learning, we see three basic uses:
- Amplifying voices
- Shifting frames
- Inspiring engagement
At this point I strongly encourage you to go back through the slides for a clear frame of the conversation.
Just remember, in the context of Remake Learning as a platform, storytelling is a privilege. “We have a platform that many other people do not, so we work hard to help others tell their story through it… but telling someone’s story requires full consent… Story can be a portal to someone else’s reality. A real story does a great job of painting this picture. There’s also a lot of repetition in the way that we tell stories to reflect nuance in different ways. ”
I’ll leave you with three big takeaways, but make sure you check-out the slides and unedited notes below for some of the practical tips and lofty discussion that we had as a group.
Root + All’s Takeaways:
- Good Stories are Strategic
- Good Stories are Radiant
- Good Stories are Stories
For more detailed review, please read the full notes below.
Feedback: Please let us know your Findings and Feelings
Upcoming Remake Learning Events
Meetups and Lunch & Learns are posted on the Remake Learning calendar and promoted via the Remake Learning mailing list.
Thursday, September 21
APOST Fall Conference
The APOST Fall Conference for Out-of-School Time on September 21st will get you ready to dive back into this fall’s afterschool season! We are excited to have Diana Laufenberg, Executive Director of Inquiry Schools join us to provide keynote remarks on how to bring inquiry based learning into out of school settings. Click here to register and learn more about the additional workshops and presenters.
Wednesday, September 20 | 5:30 PM — 11:00 PM
Remake Learning at Life.Code Interactive Experience
For the second consecutive year, Thrival and Carnegie Museum of Art will collaborate on a unique, immersive experience that explores a simple yet complex question: “What makes us human?”
Students from Nazareth Prep and Quaker Valley School District join KnowledgeWorks, the Entertainment Technology Center, and Education Uncontained through an interactive experience of applying for work in the future (through augmented reality) and deciphering a future CV as it relates to applying for a job, position, or working arrangement that might likely be seen in 2040.
Ticket packages for the entire festival are available. Contact Beth@ascenderpgh.com or visit www.thrivalfestival.com
Thursday, September 25 | 12:00 PM — 1:30 PM
Lunch & Learn: NSF INCLUDES Progress Report
What does it look like when a University rethinks it’s admission’s process to better understand all the strengths of the applicant beyond SATs? Find out more and click here to register.
Thursday, September 27 | 12:00 PM — 1:30 PM
Meetup: September 2018
Feeling like you could use a social boost or need some inspiration? What are you working on, celebrating, struggling with? How might other Remake Learning Network members support you? Find out more and click here to register.
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Full and Unedited Meeting Notes
Storytelling 101
Thanks to Kathryn, Stephanie, Jocelyn, Serena, Jaron staff APOST
● Send info link to APOST
○ Build partnerships
○ Focus on PD + 2 PD conferences, September 21 is coming up!
● Ryan: We started talking about having a lunch & learn a while ago, so we’ve been thinking about what we’ve learned about Root + All has learned about using stories to make change
○ We don’t want to be technical or step by step because we’re still learning too
○ We have few but CONCENTRATED learnings and we also want to learn what you know as well
● Root + All is Ryan and Arielle, previously at The Sprout Fund and with Remake Learning for a long time
○ We also work with national organizations and a cluster of local organizations, too
○ We don’t have silver bullets, but storytelling is definitely part of the mix of things that we do
● Some examples of what stories YOU want to tell:
○ The scope of our work and how it serves the community
○ Specific tools and what the story of our lab looks like
○ Resource development like the KoolAid Man
■ Stories about our members
○ Parent’s enrolling children into our program- awareness building so they have the opportunity to register on time
■ Connect to Kidsburgh
○ Telling asset-based stories rather than the bad stuff people hear
○ Connecting parents to technology
○ Making and Inclusion
○ The benefits of arts integration in early childhood
○ The story of our programs that haven’t been updated in a long time
○ Importance of quality for our members
○ How important OST is for youth development
○ Following-up with students who have graduated from our project
○ How we can support you
○ A narrative around all the various programs
○ Policy that affects educators in our region
○ How our mission is being acted out in the classroom
○ Collaboration, collective impact, care, and love
○ More asset based stories and collaboration
○ Innovation and Equity are linked and that story is everyone’s job
○ Education policy and aligning my language to the climate here in Pittsburgh
● Arielle: The WHY Story: Marketing has existed for a long time, but we think “STORY” is having a moment as a way to get on board
○ Make sure to check the slide
○ Stories are how we make sense of the world
○ Appearance is nine-thenths of reality
■ If no one knows what you’re doing, then no one is going to fund it
○ If you don’t your story, someone else will
The Role of Story in Remake Learning
● Three basic uses:
○ Amplifying voices
○ Shifting frames
○ Inspiring engagement
● Alot of this lives online on social media and the blog, too
● We have a privileged role as a storyteller for other people’s voices
○ This is one of the philosophic ideas, but also practical
○ And as a communicator, we have a platform that many other people do not, so we work hard to help others tell their story through it
● Story also a way to share the possibility of story because one story may not reflect into someone else’s reality
○ A Real Story does a great job of painting this picture
● Remake Learning is it’s members. This is not unique, but an invitation, like a story, can help paint the picture of what engagement looks like
● There’s also a lot of repetition in the way that we tell stories to reflect nuance in different ways
“We were not specifically trained, it’s all been experience”
● Three Big Takeaways (Note: It’s hard to live these findings every day because of the day-to-day activities and competing priorities)
○ Good Stories are Strategic
■ Maybe this seems obvious, but stories are expensive, they take time, and it’s risky. SO, it’s important to be responsible and to make good choices
■ And in our case, because STORY is having a moment, it gets a “pass” lots of the time that other forms of marketing don’t. However, we think it’s important to be choosy about the stories we tell
■ What do you mean by get a pass?
● Other things like build a website, place ads, etc, because they are more tried and true, they are more strategic. If you’re going to invest the time and money, it should be equally strategic
■ Therefore, think about stories as an act of rhetorical objective and identify a specific audience
■ We like to think of stories as a work of art, but we’ve found that it’s more about strategy
■ There’s also a difference between audience and beneficiaries;
● The audience might be the folks already tuned in and on your side. The story for them may not be to convince them. SO the goal might be to convince those not already on your side. These audience members may not have the knowledge/context to understand you
○ Good Stories are Radiant
■ The illuminate truths, nothing exists in a vacuum, including stories. They exist in a web of other stories and we live in a web of invisible systems. Good stories can illustrate the interconnectedness of these stories.
■ We use framing to illuminate what is usually unseen
● We take examples of how things work in small ways and we use them to create a frame of reference for people’s mental models.
● We often assume that someone else’s mental model is the same as ours, but that’s actually more often than not true. Stories can help people adjust their mental models
○ Good Stories are Stories
■ As it turns out, this is true and know one seems to know this
■ A program is not automatically a story, nor is a set of data or an event
■ Stories have characters, conflicts, settings in which they occur, and have scenes with a journey rather than a destination
■ Show tangible, visible, and personal journeys
■ Have an emotional appeal
■ “You could have been there, but you weren’t, so you’re getting a story that’s almost as good.”
■ This one is the hardest thing to live up to. We don’t always live up to this ourselves.
● What’s a good example of a good story?
○ Rec2Tech PGH was a good story. It had a compelling case to integrate STEM into our city’s rec centers.
○ It helped us look at the normal experience of the day-to-day of a rec center, so it was very documentary heavy
■ This was very important, and we had the opportunity to capture the rhetoric in many different forms — web, reports, photo, video, relational
○ We find it really important to talk to kids, but often kids don’t have the skills yet to reflect in a way that positions then and now, so it’s also very important to talk to adults that work and have relationships to those kids
○ Rec2Tech PGH was also a deeply interconnected story
● What resonated with me was the idea that a program itself isn’t a story. We do a lot of work with the AGH County Jail. On the face the programs are “cool,” but I think what we don’t get to talk about that often is what happens when those people get released and keep engaging with the library.
○ This is so deeply tied to the privilege of time
● I struggle a lot with STORY Ownership
○ How do I respectfully do my job but also maintain the ownership of that story’s rightful owner
○ Telling stories requires having full consent.
○ Setting expectations very very early is key. You need to make sure that the person whose story you are telling is brought into the process at the very beginning.
○ And repeating the expectations, norms, and goals every time you meet. People have lives, they forget, so it’s key. It’s hard, but important
● Stories as artifacts: There are lots of these artifacts online… So if people are invested in these stories of the deficit model… how do you flip that?
○ This takes us back to the idea that if you don’t tell the story, someone else will
○ One tactic we try to take is to get ahead of the narrative
○ We also try to flood the field
○ THis also takes a lifetime and years of experience
○ The Frameworks Institute has also develop counter-frames to public opinion regarding public education , but it hasn’t been going on for that long
○ Our strategy is also linked to our community building strategy
○ The idea is also the take positive things and have people see the story. You take one element and build from there
■ It also helps to be succinct it can be more compelling
● Another approach that we take is to look at each story as a drop in a waterfall of stories
○ And this means that some things will be told, some things won’t.
● So one way to describe this as some “Moves”
○ Affirmative vision with a challenge to that vision
■ This reaffirms that a whole system of things needs to be in place for this thing to happen
■ Affirmative, Problem, Process-Solution.
● Stories in and of themselves won’t change the world. It’s interlocked with other human action
○ This is also similar to data
○ Root + All does not yet have a lot of experience of telling data-based stories
○ Big Data stories run the gamut of telling just one piece of the overall trend.
■ People never, ever want to hear that they are wrong. So it’s important to help people follow-along.
● Nuts and bolts recommendations about video:
○ Put it on facebook and pay for it. Remember, kids aren’t on facebook, but moms are
○ Put at the end of the video for people to share the video
○ Make it square and subtitle it
○ Tell people you are on facebook
● We also have the Playbook
● And the Iceberg Worksheet
○ What is the most compelling and relevant and then… everything else
● What about platforms?
○ Twitter is the teachers platform
○ Parents on facebook
○ YOutube dominates for users overall
○ Kids don’t care about your ad
