Stories in Progress
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Stories in Progress 〰️
“To learn is to construct, to reconstruct, to observe with a view to changing— none of which can be done without being open to risk, to the adventure of the spirit.
~Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of Freedom
This is a space for collaborators of Foreword Motion to riff on how we “construct, reconstruct, and observe with a view to changing” and to describe the adventures of our spirits.
The way we make things, the process of how we create and collaborate, matters much. It’s also fun and instructive to think about. Let’s go!
I’ve spent years capturing student stories, informally as a teacher and formally through media interviews, and witnessing the power in those exchanges. Out comes all of the possibility and passion and potential. And then the question — what can we do with what we now know?
When I found University of Chicago To&Through Project’s Student Stories, I was impressed with how the stories showed the twists and turns of educational journeys so honestly. Digging further, I learned about the theoretical frame they used when conducting interviews, following participatory action research methods. Nerdy stuff! Not surprising considering the research coming out of the UChicago Consortium for School Research is widely influential. But I was pleasantly surprised at how the team was sharing not just quantitative data, but also compelling qualitative data stories shared by Chicago students. How they conducted “semi-structured Interviews that push back against Western settler-colonial ideals of positivism, which offer a singular truth rooted in procedure. Instead, we aim to capture a holistic perspective on students in Chicago that is rooted in relationality, multiplicity, and equity (Safir and Dugan 2021). Rather than aiming for a singular vision for truth, interviews give opportunities for us to sit in many truths and lived experiences."
Field leading research and holistic perspectives of real students is a winning combination. I was curious how they might blend those assets together for greater impact.
When the team engaged Foreword Motion to reimagine their resources, they had some important goals that helped me facilitate generative design sessions. They wanted their redesigned collateral, and its new container, to be more accessible, asset-based, student friendly, and hopeful. Less jargon, more clarity. Less reading, more doing.
We landed on a plan for a new landing page that would blend quantitative and qualitative stories, that practitioners could interact with, and that would spark action. This project-in-progress is named “Numbers & Narratives” and is now in development.
Our exploration of strong data visualization has been influenced by writer and designer David McCandless. Looking at this visual about strong visuals lit a spark for our team:
NUMBERS
&
NARRATIVES
July 30, 2025
We talked about how information without story is boring.
How story without information can be useless.
And we laughed about how data “eye candy” may not drive toward a goal.
Guiding our work is the understanding that strong data visualization needs to weave information, concept, function, and metaphor into a coherent whole.
As we create this landing page and its collateral for practitioners and the students they support, we need to convey the larger story the data is telling, and what it implies for helping students have successful educational journeys, with all the real twists and turns included.
I look forward to engaging with folks who will use this resource, and to seek and incorporate their meaningful input as we design “Numbers & Narratives” — coming soon!
I FEEL LIKE SUCH A TOOL!
March 17, 2024
Toolkits have been inspiring me lately, especially ones I’m encountering in the organizing/movement space, like In It Together from Interrupting Criminalization and Dragonfly Partners, the Let This Radicalize You workbook by Project Nia based on the book by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba, and the Narrative Design Toolkit from Butterfly Lab. Their design invites me to reflect and create, without feeling judged on some rubric of how to be a better organizer. Teachers are organizers too, and I want to give them tools like this. When teachers are engaged in healing-centered practices like restorative justice and trauma-informed care, they need a supportive space and structure to process their own experiences and to freedom dream.
We’ve been working with NYC Outward Bound Schools on their “Crew Initiative” — an NYC Department of Education-funded project to increase social emotional and academic development (SEAD). Over fifty NYC public schools are part of an improvement network, sharing practice across schools, and engaging in continuous improvement cycles. Educators develop and implement “change ideas” to grow their practice of integrating social-emotional learning and academics. We’re working on the documentation and dissemination part of the work, creating videos that show the crew initiative work in action.
Rosa was documenting some work at Harvest Collegiate High School and interviewed a student named Ness, who was teaching her peers about Ramadan in response to islamophobia she experienced at school. Rosa asked to return to the school to document Ness teaching a leadership class that included students of different faiths, Ness agreed, and this video was born.
This video, and others made in collaboration with NYC students and educators, will become case studies in a creative toolkit. In this toolkit, educators and students can choose from a menu of creative protocols, mostly rooted in storytelling practices, to process the video case studies, and apply them to their own practice. We want the toolkit to feel creative, generative, supportive, inspiring, and also practical. To practice liberatory design, we want to make this toolkit with those closest to the problem, and those who will be using it. Our plan is to pilot a section of it, focused on student voice and leadership, and user test it with participants. Just like the “change ideas” that educators are working to “adapt, adopt, or abandon,” we enter into this toolkit design process with the adventurous spirit to “construct and reconstruct” based on feedback from those closest to the work. Because what’s the point of a toolkit designed without help from the people who need to use the tools?