Sharing stories of learning, success and failure allow a community to reflect, connect and imagine.

CommunityShare and our partners offer community-based storytelling workshops and support for educators, students, parents, educational institutions, and community organizations. We have helped a variety of organizations use storytelling as a way to evaluate impact of an educational program, advocate for policy change, build relationships and understanding within a community, highlight the diverse voices in an community, and build digital media skills.

If you are interested in learning more about how community-based storytelling can support your work, send us a note at team@communityshare.us.

Here are a few examples of storytelling projects we have facilitated with education partners…

Equity & Storytelling:
In 2018, we were contacted by Next Generation Learning Challenges to engage education administrators in the NGLC network to explore their relationship to equity in education. Each participant created their own 2-4 minute digital story about how their personal connection to equity informed their current commitment to educational equity. Here is one of those stories by Carmina Osuna.

Evaluating Impact & Storytelling:
The Pima County School Superintendent’s Office wanted to assess the impact of their year-long STEMAZing educator leadership program so they asked CommunityShare to facilitate a 4-day digital storytelling workshop. Participants created personal digital stories about how the STEM leadership program impacted their understanding of themselves as leaders and developed their capabilities as an educator. Enjoy DaNel Hogan’s digital story here.

Teacher Voices & Storytelling:
Teachers are often not heard beyond the classroom and are critical to shaping the public’s understanding of the education system and our need to reimagine learning. With this in mind, 2017, CommunityShare in partnership with Creative Narrations, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, The University of Arizona Poetry Center, and CITY Center for Collaborative Learning, offered a 4-day digital storytelling workshop for classroom teachers. Participating teachers were asked to think about transformative learning experiences in their lives, how that informed their teaching, and their hopes and dreams for the future of education. Each participant then completed one 2-4 minute digital story highlighting his or her own experience as learners, teachers and education advocates. These stories are intended to spark wider community engagement and ongoing conversation around how to create a healthier system for learning. Here are their inspiring digital stories.

To give you a taste, here is Marco Dominguez’s story about his personal experiences as a Latino student, teacher and advocate for greater teacher diversity:

Engaging Your Community Through Live Storytelling:
What makes education worth investing in? Creating our future workforce? Discovering your passion and purpose? Inspiring a love for learning?

These are some of the questions explored at the live storytelling event “Investing in Futures” hosted by CommunityShare, Odyssey Storytelling and Creative Narrations. Ten courageous Tucsonans – students, teachers, parents, superintendents and community members – shared 7 min personal stories (watch here!) about their education experiences and how we all can play an active, meaningful role in the education system. Here is Lucia, one of our amazing storytellers in action!

Parent Voices & Storytelling:
Parents are a child’s first teacher. Child-Parent Centers (CPC) wanted to understand directly from parents what role the play in preparing their young children for school and what challenges they face. CommunityShare facilitated a methodology called PhotoVoice, during which parents photographed and wrote about these issues with the ultimate goal of sharing their visual perspectives with CPC’s Policy Council.