EquityxDesign: The Power of Sharing Stories
By Lauren Overton
The lion’s story will never be known as long as the hunter is the one to tell it.
- West African Proverb
I was first introduced to this West African proverb when I heard Dr. Howard Stevenson speak. I was in an executive leadership program, hoping to become a school principal. Dr. Stevenson opened with this adage and then segwayed into stories about his childhood, family, and fatherhood. As I sat in the audience, Dr. Stevenson took our cohort through a whole variety of emotions. We laughed, some cried, and we all connected.
Dr. Stevenson’s stories were affirming for people of color and eye-opening for some white people in the room. He talked about racialized stress, something many refrain from naming. He illustrated the complexities of racial socialization in a series of vignettes about his life. It was a masterclass in the power of storytelling that built both understanding and empathy in the space of a short lecture.
This fall, I am entering my 8th year as a school principal in Philadelphia. Storytelling is something I use in practice to connect and make sense of my work. Every summer, I reflect on the stories we should share with our staff, families, and students. We also think about the stories that families, students, and staff need to share with us so we can learn and grow as a community. In a job that requires constant decision-making and responsiveness, I regularly reflect on whose story is not being told.
When I was six, I lived with my mom, a single parent at the time, who waited tables at night and went to school by day. Extended family members and friends often cared for me when she worked nights. She struggled to make ends meet. I felt different from my peers that lived in more traditional families. I craved a story that connected to my own.
During this time, my first-grade teacher, Mrs. Monahan, changed my life by reading A Chair for My Mother by Vera Williams. It was my first time seeing a single-parent household depicted in a story. I deeply related to the narrative that lovingly depicted a young girl who wanted to save up for a chair for her mother so she could rest after a long shift at the diner. I felt a kinship with the young girl and understood a part of her story because it was like mine. My peers did not reflect my family structure or circumstance; it was mirrored back to me by a beautiful, thoughtfully curated children’s book.
Still, to this day, I think about the time my teacher read this book. I was convinced she picked it for me. Six-year-old me felt seen and cared for simply because Mrs. Monahan picked a book that helped me see a version of myself. Today, I often share this anecdote with my teachers to illustrate the importance of knowing the children they work with. Imagine if every child could see themselves and learn about other’s stories in the classroom. Stories are powerful. They provide us with opportunities for windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors to see ourselves and see others. Narrative storytelling has the potential to offer the same benefits.
Last year, our school’s parent-organized Equity Circle led a community conversation where families focused on specific topics and concerns to address in the year ahead. One of the emerging topics included opportunities for storytelling, specifically conversations about culture, school, and racialized incidents in the community. In alignment with the principles we’ve adopted from the 228 Accelerator Design at the Margins course, storytelling can make the invisible visible.
Stories of marginalized groups are often untold, yet our society expects people to navigate a deeply racialized society. How can we build racial literacy as a society without centering the stories of the most marginalized? Storytelling across differences can be a catalyst to support schools as we learn to come together and engage in difficult conversations. This connective work is essential for creating the primary conditions necessary for change. In sharing stories, we raise our collective awareness and will design, think, and lead with those experiences in mind.
This year, our school is launching a learning campaign titled “One School, Many Stories.” This theme is more than a slogan. It represents optimism in a world that needs love and healing. In the insightful words of Sharon M. Ravitch,
"Stories are how we understand the world--they have power to constrain, liberate, destroy, repair, create, teach, heal, and transform."
This statement underscores the immense influence that narratives hold in shaping our perception of reality and driving profound change. Storytelling reflects the complexities of our existence and can shift the way we think, heal, and, ultimately, transform our lives and the world we live in.
This week teachers and staff returned to school. We led with relationship building that included a community walk. We spent time with our colleagues learning about the neighborhood and getting curious about the current and historical context of the school’s catchment area. It was grounding and informative to our practice. The conversations elevated on our walk are just small pieces of a rich tapestry of stories about the ecosystem we work in.
As we build together, we hope storytelling will be a tool to connect our community so we can go deeper. We plan to use different mediums such as art, videography, literature, written narrative, oral storytelling, and poetry, to elevate student, teacher, and community perspectives. We plan to share with the broader community to build our collective knowledge to learn, grow, and connect across differences.
Schools must include the most marginalized, or the hunter will continue to tell the story. Breaking that cycle is the key to imagining a new way of being in community together.
