Storytelling to Engage Parents and Community

Storytelling is among our oldest traditions, embedded in human nature. Everyone can connect through a good story. But how does storytelling affect a school’s interaction with families and community? A good narrative can enhance your relationship with parents and the general public. Compelling stories can drive interest and build trust for your school.

Attributes of an Effective Story

1. Authenticity: Tell your stories with real people: students, teachers, parents, community. 

Authentic storytelling builds trust by sharing relevant information and establishing transparency. Beyond that, using your own people in the stories you tell will highlight your district’s successes, innovations and challenges - giving community members the information they need to feel connected to and invested in your work. As DehlerPR account manager and former journalist Dave Beery puts it, “authenticity is self-serving in a positive way. People are more appreciative of genuine stories.”

2. Relatability: Infuse your stories with emotions that everyone can connect with.

This goes hand-in-hand with authenticity. A story with a familiar or relatable person displaying universal emotions such as pride, hope or fear is an effective way to reach your audience and ensure your narrative sticks with them.

3. Structure: Stories need structure: beginning, middle, end.

Clearly structured stories are easy to follow and comprehend. Draw your audience in with an engaging hook, retain them with a relatable fact-based center and reward their attentiveness with a satisfying and impactful ending.

4. Language: Make sure your story is understandable and accessible.

-Tell your story in a simple and universal language. 

-Avoid education jargon.

-Employ a basic storytelling approach that can resonate with anyone.

-Do not exaggerate or oversell stories; embrace honesty.

“Education is famous for all of its jargon,” says Ron Wilke, retired superintendent and DehlerPR Senior Strategic Counselor. “You’ve got to be able to translate that at a level people can relate to and understand.”

What to Do With Your Story

After identifying and constructing your story, it is important to know how, when and where to produce and distribute it.

1. Media Outlets: Use a variety of formats to tell your stories.

Employ a variety of these platforms to reach diverse elements of your community.  

• Video testimonials and photos put faces to stories and enhance authenticity and relatability. 

• Written segments in newsletters and websites are perfect for providing new, detailed or complex information. 

• Podcasts and radio segments advance authenticity through the audience hearing your voice directly and connecting that to your story and message. 

“All of the channels are important because everyone connects differently," Wilke stresses.

2. Targeting: Certain stories need a more specifically defined audience.

Targeting a specific audience gives you the opportunity to specialize your story to said audience’s interests to further enhance its appeal and impact. Beery notes, “there’s a lot of audiences for a school: internal like teachers and staff, external like families and community. Reaching each of these audiences individually is sometimes more important than scattershotting to a broad audience.”

For example, if your school is hosting a college fair, target your posts toward upper class high schoolers. If you are posting about preparing for high school, target your information to middle school parents and students. If you are promoting an informational event for kindergarten newcomers, target young parents in your community. A story about the benefits of work-based learning could be targeted to the Chamber of Commerce.

Also, keep in mind the importance of your internal audiences. If, for instance, you are preparing for a referendum, first sharing the referendum’s benefits with staff is essential. Staff members will feel included, informed and have the potential to become key advocates throughout the community.

3. Distribution: To benefit from your stories, your community first needs to hear them.

Create a simple but comprehensive system for telling your stories, utilizing a blog, social media page, e-newsletter or all of the above. 

Distribute your stories through other channels as well, such as local newspapers, websites, radio shows and podcasts - anything that extends reach throughout your community. Telling stories through non-school related media channels ensures that all stakeholders, including those who do not have school-age children, will feel better informed and connected.

How to Keep Stories Fresh

To keep your storytelling consistent and flowing, consider implementing a system of collecting stories from throughout your district. A steady stream of information and stories builds relationships with your community.

1. Story-Gathering: Encourage students and teachers to share their stories.

Let your community know that their voices want to be heard.

• Encourage staff to share noteworthy stories.

• If your staff does not include a communications professional, consider a modest stipend to a designated staff member at each school to solicit and share positive stories.

• Create a way for parents to make their voices heard.

• Visit learning spaces yourself prepared to document stories.

2. Community: Along with school-specific stories, encourage community stories as well.

Reach out to your community and ask them to share stories of the ways in which they appreciate or contribute to or benefit from your schools. Tell, for instance, the value of school volunteers or sponsors. Getting everybody involved bolsters the strength of your community and builds trust.

3. Variety: Tell a range of stories. 

Inform your audience of anything that has implications for the community. Most of this communication will be positive, but also be prepared to share information about your schools that may be difficult or challenging. Transparency in these circumstances is just as important as sharing the good news when it comes to maintaining credibility and trust.

The ultimate goal of storytelling is to buttress your everyday work of helping students grow, learn, strive and achieve. It is essential to show parents and the community the results of your work. In summary, remember that most community members will not engage with bureaucratic speech or statistics offered without context. However, authentic and relatable stories told in understandable terms will draw your community in, establish trust and build meaningful relationships beneficial to schools and the broader community, alike.

Word Wizardry: Crafting Headlines and Captions That Click

Headlines draw your audience in by containing the most essential information. Keep them short and sweet, maximizing the little word count they are afforded to grab attention as effectively as possible. Cutting words that are not essential like adjectives and adverbs can help achieve this. Additionally, Beery says “some element of creativity” can provide an extra spark to your headline. Consider a fun play on words or a snappy pun. 

Attributes of a good headline:

• Concise

• Eye-catching

• Efficient

Cutlines and captions follow similar guidelines but offer a bit more latitude. The point of a cutline or caption is to describe what a reader or viewer is seeing in an image or infographic or video. Descriptive adjectives and adverbs can be ok in cutlines and captions, which are afforded more space than headlines.

Attributes of a good cutline:

• Properly descriptive

• Accurate information

• Near the image or graphic

Zach Nelson is an intern with DehlerPR. He is a recent graduate from Minnesota State University, Mankato.