Storytelling for Influence

Instead of Lesson Planning for Curricula

Great stories tell us something about what it means to be human.

— Jenn Maer, IDEO Design Director

When Jenn Maer arrived at IDEO, she had this idea of blending storytelling with design. At the time, most people were indifferent to the idea of storytelling as a method for creativity and innovation. Her colleagues didn’t really understand how to best utilize her talents as a storyteller in the design of new products and services. Her current title at IDEO is Design Director, though she doesn’t fit the typical mold of a designer of things; she’s a writer. Maer classifies herself as a designer “whose medium is words and narrative.” She is fervent that storytelling is design and they shouldn’t be separated from one another. Storytelling is currently en vogue: companies incorporate it into pitching and branding, and explaining their values to prospective customers.

Maer is happiest when she is creating things that bypass the brain’s radar and go straight to the heart. She teaches IDEOU’s course, Storytelling for Influence because she understands how stories motivate people to take action. Maer says, “stories get people excited about moving toward new futures. Stories bring the unimaginable to life.”

Maer’s sentiment is exactly what I am looking for when I teach my students. I always strive to bring academic content to life. I believe that Maer’s lessons for compelling storytelling can teach educators a lot about designing amazing learning experiences.

In 2020, I took Maer’s course, Storytelling for Influence. I wanted to see how I might be able to improve my lessons through storytelling. The online course was an incredible experience! I learned how to take ideas (or in my case, academic content), and shape them into compelling stories for my students. One of the most impactful exercises, was developing a storytelling brief for building, sharing, and reflecting stories.

A brief is a storytelling blueprint. Today, I consider myself a teacher-designer of learning experience because I continue to use briefs instead of writing a lesson plan. Instead of thinking about what specific lesson I need to teach, I consider what story I want to tell my students. What do I really want to say? What do I want my students to feel? What do I want my students to remember (not just for an upcoming test, but as adults)?¹

A storytelling brief has four parts: audience, needs, goal(s), and your big idea.

Audience

When designing a student-centered, culturally responsive learning experience, students always come first. Engaging an audience is the most important part of telling a good story. When I empathize with my students and show them, through authentic stories, how they fit into what they are learning, they are more engaged. Just like Maer says, I go through my students’ heart first, then I engage their brains.

Needs

If I don’t know my students, then it is impossible to create an experience that meets their academic, social, and emotional needs. Teaching is about finding the underlying needs of my students and empathizing with them so that I can meet that need. What do my students care about? When I create with my students in mind, our learning experiences are far more meaningful and memorable.

Goal(s)

What am I trying to achieve with this learning experience? Am I trying to prepare students for an upcoming event or experiment? Do I want to get them excited about reading? Am I trying to help them heal from their fear of Math? Every learning experience (and story) has an emotional root. I take my students on an emotional journey with their learning. As Maer says, “Storytellers can navigate a room through a whole tide of emotions.” I strive to do the same with my 30 students.

Big Idea

What is the one thing I want my students to remember? I work to make our learning experiences have a compelling story that captures a problem students are trying to solve. Many teachers are familiar with posting their learning objectives on the board before a lesson so that students can see the clear goal for learning. I think of a learning experience’s big idea as more than an objective; it is something I want my students to feel and remember as adults, not just for an upcoming test.

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A page from my Storytelling for Influence workbook.

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When I sit down to create a storytelling brief, I am designing an impactful learning experience. This gives me a chance to reflect on the medium that I want for the experience. Many teachers default to worksheets or slide decks. Depending on the message I am trying to convey, different learning experiences require different media to be effective. For example, maybe I want to create a learning experience that allows my students to build self-efficacy in writing. If I know my student audience, I may know that many of them do not see themselves as writers. Giving them a presentation about the virtues of communicating through writing will fall flat. Instead, I need them to wrestle with their academic identities around writing. There may even be some past trauma that students need to work though. The story I want to tell for this type of learning experience will be one of letting go of who they think they should be and embracing who they really are. I want to connect with my students and help them see how a writing life will serve them well. I may have a big idea of cultivating students’ self-compassion for not wanting to write or possibly resiliency and a growth mindset for pushing through a difficult writing project. Either way, I want to design a learning experience that provides them with psychological safety and fosters their growth.

I have seen way too many teachers pull out a lesson plan from the previous year (or decade ago!) and make the necessary worksheet copies for an upcoming lesson. I always cringe at this because when I design a learning experience, there is never a guarantee that it will work with my students, even if it did last year. The standards remain the same, but the experience can change depending on my students. This does not mean that I am creating fresh every time, but I am looking at each group of students with fresh eyes, so that the learning experience meets their unique needs.

Once I have a storytelling brief, I need to build a learning experience prototype and test it out. Ideally, sharing a learning experience idea with a friend or colleague allows me reflect on their feedback. As Maer explains with sharing stories,

“It’s a vulnerable exercise, and can be a painful one when you’ve poured yourself into a story. But keep in mind, feedback isn’t personable. It’s simply in the service of making your story better.”

This applies to learning experiences as much as stories. I may have a great idea for an experience, but I need to solicit feedback in order to reflect on the viability, feasibility, or desirability of the idea. The intersection of these three elements is where IDEO believes design thinking lives. My learning experience may sound awesome in my head, but might not be financially feasible (most cases in public education). It’s easy miss the bigger picture if I don’t test out my ideas with a colleague.

Photo by Sergey Zolkin on Unsplash

Soliciting feedback can be a scary exercise, but having some specific questions handy, makes the process easier. These are from Maer’s Storytelling for Influence course:

• What was most memorable?

• What do you have questions about?

• What moved or motivated you?

• What, in your opinion, was the big idea?

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Since designing learning experiences requires creativity and planning, I find that having a few standard elements helpful. Some of the best learning experiences I have experienced or taught have included almost all of the following elements.

Make it personal

Human-centered design thinking requires you to center on those whom you are designing for. Designing student-centered learning experiences requires knowing your students and making the content accessible and personal so that students can see themselves in their learning. This takes time, but is well worth the effort.

Get emotional — be vulnerable

If we want our students to be vulnerable in their learning, then we need to be vulnerable in our teaching. Students come to us with all sorts of baggage, from racial prejudices to traumatic interactions with other teachers. We need to be prepared to get emotional with our students. Teachers are conditioned to leave their emotions at home. I hate the axiom: Don’t smile until Christmas. That is crap! You will not be able to teach a child until you can reach that child on an emotional level. Being vulnerable with your students does not mean oversharing intimate details of your life. It means connecting on a human to human level. Your students are someone else’s babies.

Use anecdote and reflection

When learning experiences contain anecdotes and reflection, students can better connect with the learning and the teacher. An anecdote is a story that Maer describes as a “put-you-in-the-room-moment.” These moments provide students with sensory details that helps them see the concepts you are teaching. A reflection is a part of the story where you help your students make sense of something they just saw or heard. I have seen teachers refer to this as “thinking out loud,” but I feel that a intentional reflection gets your students to feel what you are describing, not hear your thinking.

Make it visual

We are visual creatures. Learning to sketch your ideas is an important skill that can be learned and practiced. Dan Roam, author of Back of the Napkin and Draw to Win explains how visual processing works in the brain. He coined the term visual thinking to help people use pictures to illustrate their thinking, tell better stories, and convey complexity through visuals. This is not about having you or your students improve their artistic ability; rather it’s about giving students the confidence to communicate their ideas. Roam explains that if you can draw five shapes then you can draw anything and communicate any idea. The more visual you make your learning experience, the more impact they will have on your students’ learning.

Give a call to action

I love feeling inspired during keynote presentations as I listen to the speaker tell their stories and share their insights. If a speech just ended there, I would feel frustrated because I want to act. My favorite part of any keynote is the end when the speaker gives the audience a call to action. When you motivate and inspire an audience, they crave something actionable. We all want concrete ways to improve our lives or make the world a better place. Students want concrete ways to demonstrate their learning. If you want the learning to continue when students leave for the day, I try to design a learning experience with a call to action. I tell my students this is “thinking homework”, something I want them to think about in preparation for the next day.

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Here is my final project for Maer’s Storytelling for Influence online course. Even though my kids are a bit older now, I think the message still stands. What do you think? Did I hit all of the above elements? Let me know what you think in the comments.

I find that when I use storytelling and briefs to plan our learning experiences, teaching and learning are more enjoyable. Instead of ticking off boxes that we completed certain activities, I feel more connected to the electricity in the classroom.

Have a great week!

— Adrian

Resources

• I love watching Dan Roam speak! His talks are so interactive and get me thinking about things in different ways. I highly recommend this TED Talk where he outlines visual thinking and the power of using it to communicate clearly.

A blueprint for planning storytelling projects | NPR

• This post highlights The Project Blueprint for NPR’s Story Lab Workshop. Even though this resource is for planning a project, I found the template helpful when planning and designing learning experiences for my students.

We are all storytellers! — Check out some of my former students’ stories!

• When I teach my students narrative storytelling, I recreate a Moth Story Slam experience, tying in elements from Pixar and improvisational theater. I wrote about this learning experience is more detail here.

• In this video, Jenn shares many of the lessons I learned from her storytelling class.

1. Planning with Equity in Mind from Culturally Responsive Education in the Classroom: An Equity Framework for Pedagogy by Dr. Adeyemi Stembridge