Stories for Teaching & Training

I recently returned from a national 3 day conference at which I presented two workshops, and facilitated three "job-alike" sessions for college faculty. After spending much of this year as an instructional coach and designer it was wonderful to be back in the role of trainer. While I enjoyed delivering both my workshops, I especially enjoyed the one on solution focused classroom management because it gave me an opportunity to use stories as a tool to train to my outcome.


Stories are powerful vehicles for gaining attention and buy-in, stimulating recall, providing examples, conjuring up emotions, motivating, and building rapport and credibility with your audience. We love stories. No matter how old we are, or how many academic degrees we possess, in addition to wanting the research and rationale for new content, everyone still loves a good story. Because of the power of a good story to make learning memorable, the skill of storytelling is a valuable one to those of us who teach and train.

After preparing for and delivering my workshops, I'm reminded of some good guidelines for the use of stories in teaching and training.

-A story needs to be related to the outcome!
- A story of struggle is often more impactful than a story of perfection
-Out of respect for our audience and to keep them with us, the story should not go on too long. It should be carefully planned, well-rehearsed, and executed with enough drama in voice and body language to keep participants engaged.
-A story that confides and confesses (appropriately) has a way of letting your audience know that you get the struggle (whatever that may be) and that you've walked in their shoes and that you are willing to share what you have found helpful. A good story can get attention, gain buy in, establish your credibility, and be a great way to help participants remember key strategies for meeting the class or training outcome.

So here's how I used three stories in my workshop on solution focused classroom management for adult learners. I opened my workshop by saying that I wanted to start by sharing three true classroom management horror stories. I've written them exactly as I told them.

Story #1 takes place in a men's medium security prison. The men are working on a pencil and paper task and I'm moving around the room assisting them as they indicate their need by a raised hand. I'm helping one gentlemen when another very young man, after having his hand in the air for about 15 seconds, gets extremely irritated waiting for me. He sighs loudly, breaking the quiet of the classroom and says, "Tracy, do you know what I'm IN FOR? If you knew what I was IN FOR, you would NOT be keeping me waiting. You would be AFRAID. And you'd be over here right now helping me! Well, saying something like that in a prison classroom is akin to yelling "FIGHT" on the prison yard. Let's face it, this is the most exciting thing that's happened in these parts all week! Instantly, 20 pencils were frozen in the air and 20 pairs of eyes were on me, all thinking, I'm sure, "Wow, what's she gonna do?!"

I stopped the story there and proceeded to story #2.

Story #2 takes place in a graduate school classroom, this time filled with 20 middle aged women and 1 man. This was a cohort of graduate students in an Adult Education Master's program. The class was studying Learning Theories. They had completed individual research papers on their assigned learning theory. In today's class they were to join with others who had studied their same theory and prepare a presentation they could give to their peers on their learning theory. And they were to use strategies from their learning theory to do it. They worked for a couple of hours and all was well until I dismissed them for lunch. I checked in with each group and then they went off to lunch, prepared to begin presentations when they returned. I stopped at the last group and not a one of them would make eye contact with me. They all seemed fascinated with the tops of their shoes. One woman finally looked up, eyes flashing, jaw set, fairly hissing at me, "We aren't ready. We DON'T have a presentation. We spent the time instead reviewing MY paper. I NEVER get good feedback in peer review and I was determined to get the feedback I needed so we did that instead! We have NO PRESENTATION!" Nostrils flaring and red in the face, she glared at me. Not being able to resist the unfolding drama, five pairs of eyes unglued themselves from the tops of their shoes, and slowly raised their eyes, looking up at me expectantly.

I stopped the story there and proceeded to story #3.

Story #3 takes place in a community college classroom, on the first day of a new program with young adult students 18-26 years of age. Because it is the first day, the students are gathered together for an orientation. Because it is the launching of a pilot program VIPS from the college are present, including the campus President, along with the faculty who will be teaching this cohort of students, and dignitaries from the sponsoring organization. It was my distinct pleasure to be leading this fabulous student group in some team building. I was right in the middle of what seemed like a successful team building activity when a student at the back calls out in an irritated whine loud enough for the entire room to hear, "Wwwhhhhyyy are we DOING this? What is the POOOOIIIINT anywayyy? Well, you guessed it, a hush fell over the room and everyone turned their curious faces to me, even, thank you very much, the campus President.

With these three stories told up to their cliffhangers but no further, I asked if anyone could relate, if anyone had ever had an experience like this when teaching and training. Heads began nodding, some smiled, some waved their hands in the air, some called out, and most leaned in, interest piqued, waiting to see what was next.

Then I asked them to reflect upon their most challenging classroom management issue, either something current they struggled with or something from the past that haunted them still and to note it on a worksheet I'd given them. I asked them to use that classroom challenge as the focus for their work in the next 90 minutes as we explored 6 strategies for preventing or intervening in classroom management challenges.

As I used interactive and collaborative learning to train the strategies for managing classroom struggles, I gave them reflection time between each strategy to consider if and how that strategy might help them in their identified struggle. At the end of the workshop I invited them to share their story and which strategies they had selected to apply to that struggle. When they were finished, I shared the endings of my stories and asked them if they could identify the six strategies we'd explored together, embedded within those endings.

By the end of the workshop, the stories I'd shared had served as attention gainers, buy-in builders, credibility credentials, rapport builders, strategy examples, and as a final check for understanding. They became a nice organizing structure upon which I could build the content of the workshop toward the intended outcome, choosing to use solution focused strategies for classroom management challenges with adult learners.

Want to hear the end of the stories? Come back next week, and I'll share them!