Work in this demo reel reflects a variety of roles: producer, director, camera, interviewer, editor. These excerpts from longer works are examples of “making stories make change” because they generate further work, and are used ongoing for coaching, facilitation, professional learning, campaigns, and community organizing. Collaborators include Sebastian Buffa, Blaine Dunkley, Rosa Gaia, Jeremiah Jones, Damian Oropustan, Michael Parella, Megan Perez-Carpenter, Donelle Suehead-Flynn, Kyle Ward, Jessica Wood, Erica Young.
Current and Recent Projects
MULTIMEDIA TOOLKIT DESIGN
The organization: New York City Outward Bound Schools promotes equitable, immersive, and joyful learning in more than 70 NYC public schools. Their work is grounded in the understanding that social, emotional and academic development (SEAD) are innately interconnected to support young people to thrive.
The change: Educators aren’t often given space in classrooms to process their own stories and emotions. Yet, in order for educators to foster SEAD competencies in students, they need their own opportunities for healing-centered story sharing and reflection built into the continuous improvement work they regularly engage in.
The story: Foreword Motion is creating Crew Stories, a multimedia toolkit to develop SEAD competencies in both educators and students through a story sharing approach. The toolkit is aligned to the organization’s theory of action work and contains documentary video case stories from NYC schools along with prompts and protocols to process the stories and apply them to continuously improving practice.
Past Projects
RESOURCE REDESIGN
The organization: The University of Chicago is one of the world’s leading research universities. The To&Through Project strives to increase high school & post-secondary completion for under-resourced students of color in Chicago by helping educators make meaning of data in ways that support and shift practice. They analyze and share both quantitative and qualitative data on the educational journeys of CPS students.
The change: The Data & Research Team is initiating a “collateral re-imagination” project to audit and update a large catalogue of resources, repackaging their presentation to various audiences. What story are these resources telling? How could they better support the work of various stakeholders? How can data and stories be used together to drive continuous improvement?
The story: Foreword Motion consults with To&Through and Sandbox Studio to create a new website landing page, “Numbers & Narratives”, and its redesigned collateral. This interactive site blends qualitative and quantitative data to tell stories of Chicago students that are informative, accessible, asset-based, and hopeful. “Numbers & Narratives” will guide practitioners to offer targeted support to students along their educational journeys.
STRATEGIC CONSULTING
The organization: 2Revolutions works with educators and communities to realize a learner-centered future. They focus on transforming classroom experiences while building the systemic support needed to sustain these changes. They empower educators with learner-centered practices, and partner with communities to uncover local solutions through aligned policies, structures, and practices that sustain and scale learner-centered approaches system-wide.
The change: 2Rev is evolving their concept of the “two revolutions” (learner-centered education in practice and in policy) into a range of multimedia products. They want their partners and other stakeholders to understand the value of their approach to the two revolutions and envision them brought to life.
The story: Foreword Motion provides strategic consulting to the Director of Storytelling to set and work toward storytelling goals and approaches for inspiration and impact. This work involves collaborative goal setting, skill-building, and content creation.
VIDEO PRODUCTION
The organization: sideby is dedicated to connecting education professionals to accelerate innovation in teaching and learning, together. Their app provides paired conversations with targeted prompts along selected and responsive “learning pathways.”
The change: sideby is a newly formed organization that has recently transitioned from a previous business. They need to tell compelling stories of use cases to bring new members into the community and to communicate their evolved brand.
The story: Foreword Motion produces video stories featuring sideby users who represent different use cases. The process involved strategic conversations with sideby leadership, screening and selecting footage from the app dashboard, and working with educator app users to co-create authentic stories of the app’s impact.
COMMUNITY PROJECTS
The organization: Chicago Public Schools is the fourth largest school district in the United States, serving 323,251 students. My own kids attend CPS Mary Gage Peterson Elementary, which is celebrating it’s 100th anniversary this year. I am co-teaching an after school club to involve students in the centennial celebration. The club is sponsored by the North River Commission which is committed to enhancing the wellbeing of its diverse Chicago community through collaboration, engagement, and coalition building. My own 2 kids are in the club! : ) : )
The change: As Peterson celebrates its centennial, students are considering the changes the school has been through over 100 years, and the changes it may go through during the next 100. What can we find out and share about Peterson’s past and present? How and why has it changed? What has always been at the heart of this school community that we can carry forward into the next century?
The story: This club is co-facilitated by a multimedia storyteller (me), a Peterson alum, and a professional archivist. Together we explore: What can archives tell us about the past? How can oral history tell another story? How can we combine multiple sources— documents, artifacts and interviews— to tell a fuller story? The class will preserve selected artifacts from 100 years of Peterson archives and display them on a website, public library collection, and at a centennial event. They will also interview alumni and current students to create a documentary video using archival sources and captured multimedia, to be shown at the centennial event.
PRESENTATION DESIGN
The organization: UPLAN (United Parent Leaders Action Network) convenes parent leaders and groups nationally to share the best of leadership development and organizing. They engage parents who are often left out of decision-making tables and fight for policies such as equitable access to child care, parent engagement, and immigrant family protection. They represent 36 parent-led organizations and reach over 700,000 families each year.
The change: UPLAN has drafted a campaign self-evaluation tool that groups can use to guide and evaluate their campaigns. The tool will be shared with parents at various presentations to collect input and put it into practice in tandem with trainings and coaching.
The story: Foreword Motion is designed a bilingual deck to present the tool at convenings. Using visuals of parent power alongside the core content of the tool itself, the deck will inform and inspire parents toward greater organizing impact.
MUSIC PRODUCTION
The organization: EL Education is a leading national nonprofit partnering with educators to transform diverse public schools into hubs of opportunity for all students to achieve excellent equitable outcomes. Their highly rated ELA curriculum is based on the Science of Reading, including structured phonics, which empowers all students to read complex texts and master literacy standards.
The change: A structured and systematic approach to phonics is new for many educators and students. EL Education’s Skills Block is designed to continually build students' ability to map graphemes (letters) to phonemes (sounds). The infusion of music is one of the most critical ways to incorporate the characteristics of primary learners into foundational skill development.
The story: Foreword Motion, along with Multipotent (Rosa Gaia) and Mr*Sparkle (Sean Brennan) worked with EL to produce a suite of music and lyric videos, Skills Songs, which are integrated into daily Skills Block lessons to infuse animal-themed joy into learning to read and write
COURSE DESIGN + FACILITATION
The organization: Northeastern Illinois University is a public University in Chicago ranked number 1 among all Midwest colleges and universities as the most diverse. The Community and Professional Education department offers non-credit classes, workshops and summer programs to the community.
The change: Students in the Stories in Progress class brought a “change process” to the group, and engaged in communal story sharing protocols to adapt and apply to their unique situations. Designed in a lab format, students shared their progress toward change with classmates as the work evolved. Change processes revolved around topics of othering & belonging in schools, affordable housing justice, perimenopause treatment, and tensions in Jewish school funding.
The story: Foreword Motion designed and facilitated this 8 week course featuring protocols adapted from story sharing traditions around the world and throughout history.
PODCAST PRODUCTION
The organization: EL Education is a leading national nonprofit partnering with K-12 educators to transform diverse public schools into hubs of opportunity for all students to achieve excellent equitable outcomes. EL is guided by a reimagined definition of student achievement in “three dimensions” – mastery of knowledge and skills, character, and high quality work.
The change: School districts are not always designed with a “three dimensional” or whole child approach to teaching and learning, instead often focusing mostly on metrics like test scores. EL Education’s “Advancing Equity” project partners with school districts to enact a whole child approach toward equitable outcomes for all students.
The story: Foreword Motion produces the podcast series Districts Designed in Three Dimensions featuring school district partnerships in Sunnyside, AZ; Oakland, CA; and Madison, WI. Episode 1 focuses on why three dimensional learning must be designed systematically at the district level. Episode 2 explores the change management process of doing so.
Belonging Podcast (Producer, Director, Editor, Facilitator)
A podcast about reckoning, reconciliation, and rebuilding. Our team offers professional learning. For example, we facilitated a session at the District 65 Equity Symposium where participants engaged in storylistening and storytelling using the podcast as a common text, and set intentions for equity work in their schools. Collaborators include Erica Young, Bill Healy, Rosa Gaia, Sean Brennan, and Senyah Haynes for facilitation.
Adapting and Enhancing Curricula: Water Around the World (Producer, C0-Director)
This video was created as part of a grant funded project to support teachers in adapting EL Education’s curriculum to make it relevant to their local communities. This class in Colorado adapted a curriculum module about water, centering it around a pipeline controversy in their town, and promoting reduced water use in the community. This video series is used to professionally develop teachers to adapt curricula to respond to local contexts.
Co-directed and edited by Rosa Gaia. Camera: Blaine Dunkley, Michael Parella, Kyle Ward.
Restorative Practices in Crew at Brooklyn Collaborative (Producer)
Videos are a powerful and efficient tool to show and spread shifts in practice. This school in Brooklyn unpacks how restorative practices, an approach that often requires a shift in mindset, has changed the culture of their school. The video is a learning tool to other schools are implementing restorative practices at their schools and can learn from this proof point shown and framework described by coaches Jose Rivera and Taron Williams.
Directed and edited by Rosa Gaia in partnership with Aurora Kushner.
Make the World Better (Music Video Producer)
During the early days of lockdown, this collaborative music video was featured in the New York Times as an example of how to make schools more human. It was made in two weeks in physical isolation, in collaboration with families and music teachers. Composed by Charlotte Bowder, arranged by Sean Brennan, directed and edited by Rosa Gaia, music instruction by Victoria Stubbs and Mandolyn Barrymore. Project: Jessica Wood.
Here We March, Here We Stay (Producer, Director, Camera, Editor)
Made with Palenque Logan Square Neighborhood Association, this video documents a march for affordable housing in a rapidly gentrifying area of Chicago. The empty lot on which the march ultimately convenes is now the site of an affordable housing complex. Collaborators: Christian Diaz, Marcelo Ferrer, and Bridget Murphy.
The Power of Crew (Producer)
This video was produced for EL Education as part of a series featured in the book We Are Crew: A Teamwork Approach to School Culture. A long-range national project, this video features footage from 21 schools across 12 states. The diversity of representation shows the many ways it can look to build a culture and structure of support in schools, creating multiple entry points for viewers to try out what they see. Edited by Rosa Gaia.
Literacy is a Civil Right (Project and Video Producer & Director, Camera)
For this project, we organized with 7 schools in Detroit to build and stock little free libraries and donate them to 4 community organizations. This involved coordinating with Detroit Public Schools Community District, Detroit Little Libraries, The Heidelberg Project, Rx for Reading Detroit at University of Detroit Mercy, Detroit Hives, We Found Hip Hop, Caught Up, Brilliant Detroit, and four local artists. Camera: Sebastian Buffa, Rosa Gaia, Jeremiah Jones. Edited by Sebastian Buffa. Project; Jessica Wood.
We Acknowledge: Unerasing the Nisenan Tribe (Producer, Better World Day mini-doc grants)
I helped to establish an annual media grant program at EL Education, and supported many projects like this one, in which teachers and students participate in the media making. This documentary explores how students and staff in Nevada City, California explored their own relationship to living on unceded Nisenan land.
Editing and animation: Damian Orpustan. Content direction: Donnelle Suehead-Flynn. Support from Megan Perez-Carpenter and Rosa Gaia. Project: Jessica Wood.
The Suffragists (Music Producer)
Created for a 4th grade EL Education curriculum module Responding to Inequality: Ratifying the 19th Amendment, these four songs were adapted from a novel that anchors the study of the suffragist movement, and will be embedded in lesson plans prompting students to compare texts of different forms and genres.
Lyrics by Breah Byrd and Sean Brennan, composed by Sean Brennan.
Voices of 39 for Public Safety (Producer, Director, Editor)
In 2023, Chicago voters elected the first district council for community oversight of policing. This video was part of a campaign for three candidates running together on a slate. The entire slate was elected.
Camera: Sebastian Buffa, Paul Brennan. Made for 39th Ward Neighbors United.
The above is a small sample of work; many more projects available to view upon request. Participatory storytelling opens pathways for reflection and transformation. Foreword Motion takes an approach that is collaborative and generative, rather than transactional or extractive. The Voice of Witness Ethical Storytelling Principles and the Immigrants Rising Storytelling Bill of Rights are strong references for our approach to shared work.