Storytelling for Connection, Advocacy,
and Data-Driven Decision Making
By Maryam Brotine and Jennifer Ciok
“Bridging connections with each other, our school districts and our communities through storytelling.”
This is the impetus behind the new initiative, IASB Storytellers, that launched in August. IASB has been elevating the importance of storytelling over the past few years, because taking the time to share stories can help build trust, foster understanding, and strengthen the connections between school boards and the communities they serve.
When stories are combined with meaningful data, they become a powerful tool for communicating district priorities, celebrating successes, and elevating the challenges being faced.
Storytellers for Connection
IASB staff and the Board of Directors began exploring storytelling for connection early in 2025 by collecting audio interviews of each other, delving into our own reasons (our “why”) for supporting public education and for board service. In doing so, we learned that you could work alongside people for years — decades even — and not know about key experiences that shaped who they are today! Through our storytelling, we learned about one staff member who found her voice and passion in elementary school thanks to a welcoming choir director, and another who was inspired to love literature by an English teacher with a gift for making the classics relevant to modern life. We learned about members of the Board of Directors being inspired to run for their local school boards because they or their loved ones had really good public education experiences, or did not and as a result, knew where improvement was needed.
In November 2025, we brought storytelling to members during Equity Immersion under the theme The Power of Us: Storytelling for Justice and Joyful Schools. Attendees learned how to bring ethical storytelling practices to their districts and to investigate district data to uncover stories of student struggles, successes, and options for progress.
Following these endeavors, our next step was clear: We needed to leverage the power of stories to inspire change through advocacy work.
Storytelling for Advocacy
Last September, Senator Dick Durbin told a group of school board members that the best meetings he attends are ones that begin with the line, “Let me tell you a story…”.
Stories help people see another person’s perspective and can illuminate an issue in a way that straight facts often can’t. At IASB, school board members are regularly asked to advocate for their district. Whether with the community, staff, or local, state, or federal legislators, school board members play an important role in sharing the district’s vision, the challenges that have arisen, and what is needed to achieve the goals moving forward. To do this effectively, they need to know, understand, and be able to share the stories of those most affected by the changes being made.
One opportunity that IASB members have to share their stories is through Advocacy Days in both Springfield and Washington, D.C. When preparing members for these experiences, we share the importance of knowing your audience and what you are trying to achieve through your advocacy. We talk about taking the listener on a journey by sharing both what would happen if a bill or program was enacted, and what would happen if it wasn’t. We share the power of telling the story of one person to help represent many by pairing individual stories with broader facts.
One board member, Anisha Jogee, Ed.D., from Arlington Heights SD 25, shared this reflection on her experience with storytelling: “Advocacy Days amplify change through the power of storytelling. When board members share their district realities, governance is grounded in context and humanity.”
In a time of divisiveness, that elevation of humanity can help bring about a shift in perspective that leads to real change.
Even without attending an Advocacy Day, it is important for IASB members to take the time to share stories. This can take the form of sharing their own why for serving in this role, a success they saw when visiting a school, or a challenge that has been shared by the community. In each of these situations, stories create context and keep the needs of the district at the center.
Storytelling for Data-Driven Decision Making
The importance of using data to drive decision-making is a phrase often heard at the board table. School board members and administrators recognize the imperative for having facts to back up their decisions. They know that they are there to represent the community’s interests, are in charge of spending the resources they have wisely, and, most importantly, are given the immense responsibility of ensuring that all students have the best opportunities for education and success. This means not only having facts and numbers, but also having the stories of the students behind those numbers. It means having both the qualitative and quantitative data to unearth and understand why the numbers are what they are. This might mean that there are more questions than answers at the board table, and that the solution will take additional time and voices to uncover. Stories can illuminate, but also complicate, the narrative.
IASB’s newest in-district workshop, Doing Right by All Students, includes what Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls “the danger of a single story,” where focusing on a one-dimensional story of a person or group flattens them into an incomplete stereotype.
Sometimes these stereotypes show up in data, which can appear as if it’s telling a single story of, for example, “Asian students are good at math” or “low-income students are chronically absent.” In Doing Right by All Students, board members delve into the Illinois Report Card and other educational data sources to uncover the questions they need to ask to reveal the hidden, multi-dimensional stories behind the data. Once these nuanced stories are revealed, boards can establish finely tuned strategic goals that will move their numbers in a positive direction.
What is your “why” for public education and board service? What issues are facing your district that legislators need to hear about? What are the stories behind your data? And what’s next?
- Learn more about sharing your story with IASB Storytellers by clicking on “Tell Me More” on the Storytellers webpage.
- Become an IASB Advocacy Ambassador and build strong connections with your legislators.
- Dig into your data by signing your district up for the new Doing Right by All Students workshop.
Maryam Brotine is Associate General Counsel and Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Services for IASB. Jennifer Ciok is IASB Director of Governmental Relations. IASB Storytellers is at community.iasb.com/ storytellers (member log-in required).