One of the most important steps in the storytelling process is the first step: helping students decide which story to tell. Not only will this affect their engagement throughout the learning process, but it will also require them to think critically about their values and recognize the importance of paying attention to the world around them.
In this chapter, I will share some of my favorite activities on the topic of storytelling and offer suggestions on how to choose which story to tell.
You are What You Consume: A Storytelling Audit
Our relationship with stories says a lot about who we are and what stories we choose to tell. What we consider to be a “good” story is usually determined by our personality, culture, age, gender, ethnicity, experiences, and a variety of other characteristics. There are also subtle, often unrecognized factors that influence the stories we consume and how we evaluate them, such as social factors like advertising and recommendations from friends.
Helping students understand the types of stories they currently consume allows them to recognize personal tastes and discover biases that may influence their decisions about which stories to tell and which characters and information to include in their projects.
Have students record the various stories they consume, either actively, such as when they choose to watch a YouTube video, or passively, such as when they hear an advertisement in the background. Then have them answer the following questions.
- What types of stories do you typically enjoy or watch regularly? Which ones do you avoid?
- What stories do you have access to? Why?
- Who or what is the gatekeeper, controlling the stories you experience? (Parents, school, etc.?)
What might limit your ability to experience certain stories (language, time zone, age, technology, cost, ability to see or hear, neurological differentiation, etc.)?
Then ask students to consider the authors of these stories:
- Who created the stories you experienced? Describe their demographic characteristics such as gender, age, country of origin, ethnicity, etc.
- What was their motivation for telling you these stories? How did it benefit them? What does the topic want us to do with this information?
- What potential biases affect the stories they tell us, and what information or perspectives do they choose to include?
- How are they bringing their stories to you (social media, word of mouth, etc.) and what are the costs associated with accessing these stories (owning a mobile device, signing up for a social media account, paying for a streaming service, watching ads, etc.)?
Have students discuss their thinking and ask what they think it might mean for their own perceptions of the world and others. How do these insights influence how they create and share their own stories?
Where do Good Stories Come from?
Good story topics don’t fall from the sky. They usually require an experience or artifact that triggers an emotional or intellectual response that the student can eventually develop into a story. There’s no one right way to generate story ideas, but the best thing we can do is give students time to process and reflect on these trigger moments, turning their personal responses into a powerful learning engine.
Teacher- vs Student-generated Topics. Honoring self-determination is key to developing students as independent thinkers, and it helps create a culture of professionalism and respect in the classroom. Inviting students to have a voice in their choice of academic work not only helps them make a personal connection to our program, but also provides them with the opportunity to develop high-level critical thinking skills. It embraces the concept: There is more than one way to solve a problem.
For example, a data visualization project could be created that involves collecting samples as part of a unit on learning about scientific research methods. Student choices could mean anything from deciding which phenomena to collect data on, deciding where and how to sample, figuring out how to choose the most relevant data sets, and making design decisions about colors and fonts when creating charts or graphs.
Be transparent and share your goals with students so they can understand your decision-making process, including the criteria for choosing a story topic. Having guidelines keeps the project on track and manageable, and can also serve as a creative challenge.
Topic vs. Themes. assigning homework usually means asking students to work within a defined space, often called a theme. However, I find that themes tend to impose external constraints on the way students think about a topic, such as definitions, time periods, or genres. Instead, I like to challenge students with themes, which are open-ended prompts that tend to inspire students to think about a topic in more creative ways and always lead to more interesting results.
While themes are useful for developing foundational knowledge and checking for learning, they invite students to perceive, interpret, or understand the topic in a unique way that activates higher-level thinking and allows for more flexibility, personalization, and ingenuity.
Open-ended themes allow students to be intellectually flexible in how they decide on their story projects, and also help them to wrestle with the curriculum in ways that make the most sense to them. Here are some themes and descriptions I’ve used before to help get students started:
- In the Shadows. What is unknown or hidden? Why are people or places marginalized? What lurks in your heart or mind, afraid to see the light of day? Where have we not yet been or discovered?
- Inside. Is what you seek really there? Expectations are completely reversed. What’s on the surface and what’s underneath?
- It’s not what you think. Preconceived ideas. Stereotypes. Decisions made that are better than you thought. People who surprise you (in a good way). What happens when you’re wrong?
Story Generation Techniques
Great ideas don’t magically appear in the classroom. They are born out of interactions with people, places, and ideas when we have a mindset that is open to new and surprising concepts whenever and wherever they occur.
Gathering Ideas: Wonder Journals and Media logs. My friend, middle school science teacher Leah Lacrosse, encourages her students to stay curious by having them keep “wonder journals” of ideas, questions, observations, and conversations that they continue to collect at school or at home. To enhance the creativity of their writing, my film students keep journals-describing dreams, observing life, and other creative moments that arise throughout the day.
Journals can be physical notebooks or digital notebooks that capture images, sound, and video. Older students can also collect online articles and resources they come across and add them to a media log spreadsheet. Any of these ideas can help support current projects or be seeds of inspiration for future projects.
Idea Safari. Explore a specific place on foot, or a creative tour that utilizes the freshness of seeing something for the first time to spark the imagination and generate story ideas. Have students look for details that relate to the theme of your lesson or story, such as the sensory details of a poetry unit, the font of a logo for a design project, or the frequency and repetition of a math assignment. Debrief students and have them share their findings in small groups or as a class. This can help validate students’ experiences and help them see the value of unique observations and others’ perspectives.
During the safari, students can write down or record observations and collect data such as.
- Light, temperature, materials, language, sounds
- Emotional responses/feelings about the places and people they encountered
- Questions they ask during their observations
Safaris can be formally organized by providing students with specific routes or questions, or they can be informal activities that students do on a regular basis. If you don’t have the time or budget for a field trip, even a regular experience like commuting to work can be an opportunity for a creative trip. Example.
- Choose a different route to and from school. What do you notice now that you didn’t notice before?
- Sitting in a different seat on the bus/train/car ride to school. How does your perspective differ? How do you see people and places differently from before?
- Make a map of the routes you take around campus or the places you visit most often. Make a point of changing your route and visiting places on campus you haven’t been to before.
Salons and hackathons. For centuries, artists, politicians, and intellectuals have hosted salons – intimate gatherings where people discuss current issues. More recently, web and app developers have begun hosting hackathons to offer solutions to vulnerabilities or develop new features. Create your own salon by inviting community members to attend classes or hosting online webinars with writers and experts from around the world via video conferencing tools.
Innovator’s Compass. This design thinking tool, developed by former IDEO strategist Ela Ben-Ur, helps students clarify goals and objectives, generate ideas, and decide which ideas to use. It’s a great tool for developing story ideas because it focuses ideas on the audience (the end user), allows students to reflect on the current state of the community, encourages them to dream big, and provides a way to prioritize ideas based on the following questions:What matters most? It can be used as a flexible framework at any stage of the storytelling process, from generating major story themes, all the way through to specific choices about design or when and where to publish.
Use research to help students find what they are passionate about. Inviting students to create a story based on their research means asking them to pay attention to the world around them and helps them see the value of being an expert. It also honors their natural curiosity, allowing them to embrace their interests and evaluate what matters most.
As students conduct research for their projects, have them answer these questions about their findings.
- What facts or information surprised you? Why was it so surprising?
- What in your research challenged what you knew about the topic?
- Of all your findings, what was most important to you? What is most important to others?
- Now that you have this new information, how has your perspective on the topic changed?
Empathy Interview. We don’t know what we don’t know, so we ask those who do. Even scientists, journalists, and business people start from a place of ignorance and need help figuring out what their project should focus on and what information they might need to solve a problem.
A great place to start any storytelling project is with empathy interviews, where students engage in conversations with people who are familiar with a topic so they can better understand the history and context of that topic. These are called empathy interviews because they help us understand or sympathize with the stakeholders of a topic. They help students determine what they should research, which experts they can talk to, and what questions they might want to ask in an interview. They also help reveal students’ blind spots, make stories inclusive, provide context, and stay true to historical facts.