Story Core

A 40-80 minute exercise for students to do as teams, and then as a class.

What's the goal?

This exercise is designed to help people do a fair-minded, useful assessment of how well a system or an organization is working.  For students, the subject could be anything from the regional health care system to a club or team at their school.  Or the subject of Story Core analysis could flow out of the curriculum: a group of characters in a work of literature or key figures in an historical situation.

What principles, ground rules, or concepts are at work here?

1) Begin with story, not position.

2) Redefine the win. (In this case, it's not painting as dismal a picture as you can - which is what social media and general public cynicism leads people to do - but achieving a view that balances positive and negative factors fairly.)

3) Ask clarifying questions.

4) There are multiple sides to any issue

5) Disagreement is fine; it's fruitful.  Don't try to win it or paper it over. Explore it.

6) Notice who’s not in the room.

7) Force Field Theory -  A tool for identifying which forces are promoting the results you seek, and which are restraining them.  The outcome of a Force Field Theory exercise can be to identify steps that would strengthen the positive forces and steps that would mitigate the restraining forces.  (Key learning: You can never make the positive forces perfect, nor entirely eliminate the restraining ones; life is not about perfect. It’s about boosting the helpful forces, and mitigating the restraining ones.)

More on the underlying concepts

We humans are usually pretty good at listing what we think is wrong with the status quo i.e. complaining.  We're less adept at noticing and learning from the occasions when things go well and our needs are served.  We tend to take that for granted.

The Story Core exercise, learning from the dialogue technique known as Appreciative Inquiry,tries to generate learning from two types of story - about occasions when a system or organization worked well and met people's needs, as well as times when the system worked poorly and needs were unmet. 

What's often forgotten when people discuss how to improve a system or organization is to spend time noticing what it can do well, and how those successes suggest paths to improve on what’s lacking.

A solution based on looking only at failures, at what hasn't worked, is unlikely to be successful itself. It's as important to notice a system's strengths and assets, because that's the foundation upon which you build a solution that also addresses its weak points.

Yes, system and organization can seem stuffy, vague words. What do we mean by them?

Well, we've used Story Core to help people assess things as various as the health care system in Philadelphia, the operations of Philadelphia International Airport, a nonprofit that runs an historic cemetery, the logistics of a national agricultural products company, and the newsroom of a public radio station.

But how could you deploy the technique in a school setting?

You could look at the operation of some part of the school, from the bus schedule to the cafeteria to the football team to the marching band.  Or how a school club or organization goes about its activities.  The school theater group could use Story Core to figure out the key differences between a play production that was a hit, and one that missed the mark.

You could look into the community: What's the strength of after-school activities for students?  How strong is the park system?  How well do local governments address climate change?

In another vein, you could use Story Core to assess the behavior of players in a historical setting, from the framers of the Constitution to the leaders of the 20th century labor movement to the political and scientific leaders who had to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

You could use it to understand the actions of the characters in a play or a novel.

In other words, Story Core can help a group of students think in fresh ways about a group assignment, or a shared project, or a staple topic of the social studies, science or social studies curriculums.

How to do the exercise

The exercise takes at least 40 minutes, and requires some preparatory thinking by students, so it might take more than a single traditional period to execute, though it could fit comfortably into a block scheduling period.

Start by identifying a system, organization, group of stakeholders or group of literary characters that connects in some way to what you’re covering in your curriculum.  This is what the class will try to assess.and understand using the Story Core technique..

Here's the opening prompt:

Think about x (i.e. x = your chosen focus).   Can you think of a time when X worked well and met people's needs {or: YOUR needs, if this is a system or organization with which students have personal experience}. Then, can you think of a time when X didn't work well and needs were not met?

Give students some time to think through the prompt and jot down some thoughts.

Or, even better, if you have time, pick the focus and share the prompt in one class, then ask the students to come to the next class prepared to share at least one positive and one negative story.

Once students have had a chance to think of their anecdotes, say something like:

 "We're going to get into small groups [or "work in our groups" if they are already part of your classroom setup].  Each group needs a volunteer who'll take some notes and share highlights of the stories with our full group.  Each person should get a chance to tell at least one story.  If the first person to go tells, say, a positive story, the next person to go should be someone who has a negative story.  Keep the stories under 2 minutes.  If you leave out some details, that's OK. They might come out in the next step in our exercise. 

"As you think about your story and listen to the other stories, try to pay attention to what factors led to a situation going well or going badly."

Have the following lists of factors available for viewing, on a screen, board, sheet of paper or handout:

For positive stories, what:

• Skills
• Values
• Good habits
• Resources
• Relationships or partnerships

... were present and played a helpful role?

For negative stories, what:

• Missing skills
• Misguided or missing values
• Bad habits
• Lack of resources
• Missing or conflicted relationships

-- contributed to things going badly?

(As you try out Story Core, feel free to edit or add to the list of factors, based on the kinds of things your students are noticing.)

KEY NOTE: If this is the first time the class has tried Story Core, It's probably best to model this type of analysis to the class before asking students to attempt it individually or in a group.

In that case, after giving enough time for all students to tell one story in small groups, pull the class together again and ask for one story that one group found really interesting.  Have the reporter for the group relate the story, and record some key points of the story on the board or screen.  If you can come up with a memorable shorthand name for the story - e.g. "The Strange Case of the Unanswered Phone" or "The Night We Beat the Blizzard" - that's great.

Then, whether it's a positive or negative story, help the class tease out some of the factors responsible for the outcome.  The table that produced the story can take the lead, but any student can contribute.  You can help prime the pump with comment like "Seems like the nurse in this story displayed some really helpful skills. Anybody have any thoughts about that?"

Record the factors as they get proposed by students. 

Ask students if they have the idea of what they’re being asked to do.  If it seems they do, have the small groups try their hand at Story Core analysis.

If students still seem confused or intimidated, solicit another story of the opposite type from the first i.e. positive after negative, or vice versa.

Go through the same process of identifying factors.

You can do this for as long as time permits, though one round is usually enough to give students the idea and to begin to glimpse some trends.

Once you’re satisfied students have the idea,  you can have them go back to their groups to try their own hand at Store Core analysis.

If time is short, you can offer students one of the follow-up steps below to try at home, or to prepare to try in a future class.

Follow up steps

As a follow-up assignment, you could ask students to write a short version of a story they didn't get to tell in small group, and do the factors analysis for it.

Or, to be more adventurous, you could pose this prompt:

"If you were the leader of X, what steps might you consider taking in response to the Story Core findings?  What positive factors might you seek to preserve or strengthen, and how?  What negative factors would you address, and how?"

Or this one:

 “What did you learn from this exercise about how to assess a situation?  What’s a group, an organization or system to which you’d like to apply this technique next?

This obviously is a hard assignment, but if a student could come up with one example of moving beyond a complaint about a problem to thinking of a good way to address the problem, either by strengthening positives or weakening negatives, that would be fantastic.