Share Your Story

Instructions

As you move towards implementation of bigger projects, being able to tell the story of not just what the concept is but also how you got there, is critical. Sharing why you started engaging students, who was involved, the challenges you may have faced, and what you learned about students’ needs can help you gain support from collaborators for your current project, as well as inspire support for making more changes in the future. 

Time Considerations: 30 minutes to a few hours over the course of the week to design and rehearse what you would like to share, plus the time for in-person sharing if that is your final delivery

Materials Needed: Preferred methods of writing: pen and paper, Word document, Google Docs, visual media and/or references from your process

Participants: Teachers, students, food nutrition staff, Board of Education, and/or parents

Step One

Map out individuals or groups with whom you’ll need to share this story. This could be a school principal, the school board, student government, or a food nutrition team. Choose one to start. Each audience will likely benefit from a slightly different story, based on their own internal motivations. Identify what impact or shift you hope to create by sharing the story with them.

Step Two

Assemble findings from your engagement efforts to showcase what you heard and how you hope to respond.  A simple exercise that you can try is to describe your findings and suggested changes in two sentences (e.g.,  “You told us _________. So now we are doing _________.”)

Use the worksheet to create a longer story.

Step Three

Identify when and how you are going to share the story – maybe it’s in an email or Facebook group, maybe it’s at an event or upcoming meeting. Consider how to bring your story to life. How might you drop your audience into a specific moment or experience, to help them truly feel the problem, opportunity, or impact? Consider where you have or could collect photos, audio recordings, video clips, or create visuals like WordClouds or a collage to help your audience get to know the students or school community. We are rarely moved by data alone. Stories are more memorable and are what motivate us to action.

Step Four

Practice, get feedback, and adapt the story. Before you share it, consider how you can try it out. Can you get someone to read your email and give you their honest reaction? A story is like any other tool, the more you test and refine it, the more impactful it can be.

Tool

Need help downloading and using the tools? Visit our how-to guide.