We Need a Good Story

Sitting on the shores of Crystal Lake, my mother’s friends were clutching the edges of their beach chairs with curiosity. The tale of the Common Core was gripping, an absolute cliff-hanger. What will Arne do next? What will Diane Ravitch say?  If the way our system is designed isn’t working, what’s taking us so long to become competency-based? How will innovate school leaders get states to upgrade their information systems and assessment policies? I’m not joking — During vacation I’ve been asked daily for briefings on education, always starting with the Common Core, and have to eventually excuse myself  because waves of questions  just keep coming and coming.

In trying to tell the story of competency education, I realize I don’t really have a good elevator speech. Explanations are more of an adaptive process in which questions are asked and the answers open up new ways of thinking. But we don’t always have time for that.

Now we have help. On September 30th from 4 – 5:15 the Nellie Mae Education Foundation is sponsoring a webinar for the Frameworks Institute to share their findings from the Core Story of Education Project on  how to best communicate a more complex vision of how learning happens, what disrupts it, and how to build a system that supports all children in reaching their full potential. . In a 75-minute webinar designed with the communication needs of education reform organizations in mind, FrameWorks will explore the findings and recommendations. They’ll walk us through questions such as:

• How can the case for meaningful education reform be infused with a story?
• How would we know we had a good story?
• How might it help education advocates explain what we know about what works to people who need to make sound decisions about public policies in their communities?

Click here for more information and to register for the webinar.