This document discusses how storytelling can be used to empower students and drive social change. It provides examples of organizations that use storytelling and personal narratives to engage students as leaders in their schools and communities. Specifically, SFER and College Summit are highlighted for employing storytelling techniques to increase student agency, elevate student voices, and improve outcomes like college enrollment rates and grassroots political involvement. The document advocates that students must be part of the solution to educational inequity and should use storytelling to take ownership of their school culture and enact positive change.

1. Storytelling + Social Change
Engaging Students as School and
Community Leaders
Carol Barash, PhD
NPEA 2016

2. HOW STORYTELLING AFFECTS THE
BRAIN

3. STORYTELLING + STUDENT
EMPOWERMENT
Carol Barash, PhD: Moderator
Tyler Nakatsu: The work of Marshall Ganz
Cameron Mussar + Mayra Sarteaga: How SFER uses Storytelling
to drive Community Change
Keith Frome: Storytelling + StudentEmpowerment at College
Summit

4. WHY STORYTELLING
left:
left:
Speaker-Listener Neural Coupling
Overlap of Speaker-Listener and Listener-Listener Neural Coupling
x=-59 x=-48 x=-38 x=-25 x=-5
x=-59 x=-48 x=-38 x=-25 x=-5
r=.04
r=.2
.05 FDR corrected
.05 FDR corrected
lis-lis
overlap
sp-lis

5. TAKE WRITING FROM TRANSACTIONAL
TO TRANSFORMATIONAL
IMPROVE COLLEGE ACCESS
PROVIDE END-TO-END SOLUTION TO
DRIVE MASSIVE WRITING
IMPROVEMENT
POWERING BROAD SCALE CHANGE

6. Marshall Ganz
Kennedy School of Government

11. Since 2009 SFER grew from a single college campus club into
a national grassroots organization…
• 8 States
• 5,000 members, supporters, and alumni
• 20 grassroots campaigns since 2012
• Through SFER Action Network, we’ve contacted over 250,000 voters
and have helped elect 8 reform candidates out of 9 school board
races we’ve participated in across the country
• Over 215 student voices elevated in the media, notably, in the Boston
Globe, the L.A. Times, the L.A. Weekly, the Star - Tribune, and on
ABC and Univision

13. THE PEER FORWARD MODEL

14. PERSONAL STATEMENT COMPONENTS
• Narrative
• Striking Image
• Guiding Idea

15. PERSONAL STATEMENT PROCESS
PHILOSOPHY
• Student writing as Texts
• Writing is a Group Process
• Authenticity is Hard Earned

16. PERSONAL STATEMENT PROCESS
1. Free Write I
2. Goldmining I
3. Free Write II
4. Goldmining II
5. Assembling the
Statement
6. First Draft
7. Polish
8. Second Draft
9. Complete

17. STUDENT AGENCY
Many consider the inequity in college attainment to be the civil rights
issue of our time.
And many think that the solution is to bring complex and expensive
interventions into schools.
College Summit believes in a different solution – one that is already
roaming the hallways of America’s high schools.
Students have to be seen as part of the solution to the problem of
educational inequity in our country; students must own their school
culture and drive the change we seeks so that every child does indeed
succeed to college and career.

18. IMPACT
For the last two decades, College Summit has been a leader in student-
driven change. To date, we have helped over 250,000 students from low-
income communities reach their college and career goals.
This unique peer-driven model has increased college enrollment rates in
partner schools by 20% over their baseline.
Peer Leaders are part of a growing student-led, grassroots movement to
close the achievement gap in America by making college the expectation,
not the exception.
In the next decade, this one-of-a-kind model will serve 1.8 million students
from low-income communities nationwide.

19. I AM…

20. CONTACT INFO
Carol Barash, PhD
Founder + CEO, Story2
carol.barash@story2.com
@carolbarash
Tyler Nakatsu
Managing Editor, Getting Smart
tylernakatsu@gmail.com
Keith Frome
CEO + Co-Founder, College Summit
kfrome@collegesummit.org
@KeithFrome
Cameron Mussar
Membership Associate, SFER
cmussar@studentsforedreform.org
@CameronMussar
Mayra Arteaga:
Student, SFER
marteaga@studentsforedreform.org