In a 2014 post on the blog of Grant Wiggins, a teacher recounted her experience shadowing two students. It was widely read and shared because it reminded us that too often, we’ve fallen into structures, practices, and patterns of education that forget about the experience of the students we serve. Later, the author—who turned out to be Grant’s daughter Alexis—reflected on the experience, calling shadowing “transformative to [her] own teaching and learning” and noting,

When we see school through our students’ eyes, we understand their needs on a much deeper level…. We feel empathy and compassion, badly needed emotions in… education. And if we see things we want to change, then we can change them.

Why did her account resonate with so many? It is an illustration of the power of empathetic storytelling—using the unique power of narrative to both connect us with others’ experiences and to connect others with our own.

What you’re about to read is a collection of stories: all real (some uncomfortably so), and all stimulating. Whether you are a current or former student, a child, or a parent, or an active or retired educator—whatever your age or identity—these stories will likely provoke reactions: whether “That happened to me!” or “I now understand how they were feeling” or “This is still happening… in classrooms… in 2024?” And they will show you how stories can be an avenue to connect with others’ minds, and a potential lever for change.

This foreword aims to bring out the important themes of this book—to capture its essence—from the perspective of a reader. The compelling stories that follow come from a diverse group of voices with unique perspectives. They are a gift, and they also carry an important responsibility. Here I have tried to “prime your mental pump” to truly take in what this diverse group of authors have courageously shared—and then act yourself.

Stories have the power to shape our beliefs—whether that means reinforcing or changing them. As the editors explain in the Introduction, critical and empathetic storytelling can be a bridge to build relationships and empathy, and to build our skills as educators to handle situations and challenges that we weren’t trained for—or didn’t even know we’d have to manage—while teaching human learners. By reading others’ stories and respecting their identities and experiences, we also become more mindful of the stories that our students bring into our classrooms—even if they are left unsaid—and how we could bring stories into our teaching, including both our students’ and our own.

Stories are uniquely architected to support our learning and to connect with and motivate others. While research gives us valuable insights, to make real change in the real world, the right answer may not move the needle as much as the best story. As John Dewey put it, “We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience.” We can learn through our experience—and especially our errors—if we reflect on them. Stories give us access to others’ experiences (and errors) as fuel for understanding and change. Stories can enable us to try on new perspectives, see our blind spots, help us make meaning, motivate us to change, and even provide pathways to action. Reflecting on stories can provoke us to reconsider our own assumptions, expectations, choices, and behaviors—and indeed, to change our behaviors as well as our beliefs.

The purpose of schools—and our charge as educators—is to improve outcomes for all our students. But our students’ outcomes show that we’re not there yet. The world we live in is a result of our choices and actions. If we want a different world, we must make different choices and take different actions. While we may be tempted to think that “this world results from what other people are doing” because it protects us, it ultimately limits our access to the goal. As committed educators, we must keep doing a great job, and challenge the status quo, including the systems and practices that are producing our current outcomes. At its base, change has two necessary conditions: being honest with ourselves about how our current knowledge, skills, and mindsets have led to our current results; and embracing the mindset that “I am the genesis of transformation.” So how do we make those changes?

Stories—even those based on our memories of real events—can be subjective and imperfect. But the stories in this volume, if we are open to them, may help us confront the current reality, make sense of our own experiences, and support our reflection to deepen our understanding. The more you lean into the stories, the more you will get out of them. Whatever your feelings or interpretations of these stories, they are real and justified. The stories you most need to hear will likely stick with you; they will all exercise your empathy, a crucial skill for an effective educator.

We each have many stories, including those about times our identity intersected with our work. Remembering some of them may get us excited and energized. Remembering others may break our hearts all over again. Quintessential turning point stories in education are often about moments that were hard to experience, and it can be hard to write about them because when the telling is true, the story may take us back to the experience. They can be even harder to share. But writing them, and sharing them, can also be therapeutic—and so can reading them. I am deeply grateful for the authors’ courage and trust in writing about experiences that impacted them in extraordinary ways, and to Sean and Jackie, who have shown a deep commitment to protecting and stewarding these stories, in all their raw reality. Now it’s our turn.

The stories in this book are written, processed, and manifested differently from autobiography. The authors of this volume were asked not only to share their stories, but to unpack the choices they made and reflect on their own interpretations. Reflecting on these stories enables us to carry forward productive meanings, and to remember that we only control our own interpretations and actions. In some ways, since the stories are from the past, they don’t matter as much to the future as the meaning that we make of them in the present.

As Gutierrez (2013) notes, all “teachers are identity workers” because we “contribute to the identities students construct” (p. 11). Inherent in doing this identity work for our students is understanding their identities, as well as our own. Beyond giving us greater insight into their authors’ perspectives, the stories in this volume also give us access to aspects of identity that are too often disregarded, disrespected, or damaged in our schools, through “Racism, Sexism, Ableism, Heterosexism, and All -isms” and “Bullying.” So along with these stories are protocols to read them and write your own and a framework of dispositions to keep in mind. These and other resources help build our understanding to inform our actions, to strive to be more proactive than reactive, and to continue the complicated work of making change. This book is a tool, and a challenge, to act—at an individual, classroom, school, or system level. As the editors say, “what matters most is what we choose to do… based on these stories.”

I invite you to form your own answers to the questions that the authors and editors have raised in this volume. Thank you for having the courage to read, to share your own stories, and to confront, challenge, and change your own practice as you move forward. Our work as educators is about our students and their futures, and it’s now our responsibility to be the genesis of transformation so that our students can write their own present and future stories in a way that gives them access to their full humanity, potential, and opportunity.