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Visualizing and Storytelling for Our Future:

This project was fun, engaging, and challenging from the moment it was just an inkling. Nearing the completion of the online classes for the virtual Appreciative Inquiry Facilitator Training, I started imagining ways to create a final project that integrated my new knowledge and nascent skills with my passions. My vision became the drawing for the final assignment for the course (a booklet) and was the first tangible budding of my idea, which I imagined as a seed ready to burst forth.

With a history of creating new, different, and exciting projects together, I approached a close colleague, Julie Swanson. In our virtual coffee and conversation, we focused on the current realities of the pandemic—feelings of loss, grief, and change— and imagined opportunities to be of service. We brainstormed ideas for creating an offering that would support students, teachers, and parents, using my background in instructional design, facilitation, visualization, and storytelling. It was quick work to agree on an important, Positive Topic:

Supporting Children, Teachers, and Parents: Learning Visualization & Storytelling Skills to Recognize Our Losses, Understand Changes in Our Lives and Imagine Our Opportunities for the Future

Guidance from my mentor, Cheri Torres, helped Julie and me converge on a plan for finding an intact group for the project. Through her existing network, we forged a working relationship with an independent school, which was in the throes of teaching in the time of Covid. Because the school personnel were stretched thin, Julie and I became the Core Team for the project. We weathered minimal engagement from the leadership, choppy and incomplete communication, a challenging timeline, and minimal follow-through from staff. In spite of these obstacles, we worked to assemble all the elements for creating spaces in which to bring the project to fruition.

Really even more than a highlight, the nourishment for the entire experience was the personal connections I forged: the opportunity to collaborate over time with my colleague, receiving support from my mentor, and engaging with the school staff around topics of import to their daily working lives. The high points of the project were: sharing an overview of Appreciative Inquiry and the 5D model with a small group of school staff and enabling them to have experiences with the Discovery and Dream phases, and fine-tuning the Delivery phase; as well as working with the entire school staff to have them encounter the AI principles, learn to draw, and tell their stories, all with an eye to how they might integrate this knowledge and these activities into their work.

This project grew within the confines of the impact of the pandemic. The participants held the feelings of being disconnected from their community and burned out, and the competing priorities of wanting to solve both systems issues (the transformation of the school into a antiracist multicultural community), and professional issues/daily realities of desiring to use new methods (using the AI principles in their interactions with students). The plan created worked with, and provided support in each area/concern, giving an introduction into what is possible. With the knowledge I gained, and the ability to address concerns cited, I would love to continue to work with this school… and others!