The New Narrative: Rider professor shares how data storytelling can be used to inspire big change

JAMIE GAIRO: My name is Jamie Gairo. I am the program director for two master’s programs here at Rider University. The first being the master of arts in organizational leadership and then the program that we’re going to be talking a lot about tonight in terms of education is the master of science in higher education, assessment, analytics and change management. So really talking about bringing the data to life which is kind of what Dr. Dauber is going to kind of walk us through tonight. I’m really excited to have him here. 

Dr. Jonathan Dauber is the principal of West Windsor Plainsboro High School North and he is also on the adjunct faculty for both of the programs I mentioned, the master of arts and the master of science. He has a beautiful slide deck he is going to share with us and he has lots of knowledge he is going to impart on us tonight. Dr. Dauber I’ll turn it over to you and you can take it away. 

JONATHAN: Alright well thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here with everyone this evening. A tip of the cap to Rider I was a master student at Rider in the educational leadership program. I think I liked it so much the first time that after I finished my first master’s in curriculum and instruction I came back and I did a second in administration. Rider has always been pretty close to my heart so it's a nice opportunity to be back and to work with all of you and to get a nice opportunity to communicate a little bit this evening about a new new course which I think is a pretty interesting take. 

The course is communicating educational data, edu 543. When I was initially approached about this by Dr. Trish Nolfi and it had the word data in it I was like this sounds like an analytics course or it sounds a little bit like taking quant one or quant two or something along those lines. I initially without even reading it I said no that's probably not going to be exactly  what I’d like to do so you know i kind of let it sit and then a few days later or a day later or so I went back into it and took a look at it and it was  really as much about data as it was as much about  communication of data as it was about data  itself at least in my own initial interpretation. It became something that I thought I might  be interested in. 

I think my area is a little bit more around culture and a humanistic approach to leadership and education and interactions. When I saw this course as something that would be along those lines it was an interesting opportunity. I called her back and we we started to discuss it a little bit  more it seemed like it would be something that I’d be interested in doing it seemed like it  might be something that could be good for students who might kind of see data in the same way that I’ve seen it over the last 20 years or so  of my own career in education. 

So what we'd like to do tonight is I’m going to walk you through some things. I have a powerpoint to help guide our conversation. I’ll share a little bit more about the course and let you know what it’s about. The focus of what we're gonna do tonight in terms of your own takeaways is really about the concept of storytelling as it relates to data and what that can do and how we interact as human beings and what drives us to make decisions ultimately for purposeful change whatever our organization is if it is education, higher education, k12 education, or even quite frankly anything that's beyond that. 

Alright so we're talking about the course. We want students to develop skills in communication, communication around statistics and incorporating data into delivery  methods such as writing, public speaking, teaching, informal conversations and collaboration, programming and graphic visualizations. That's what you're going to read in the program of studies. Students will understand the importance of creating a data informed culture and how it contributes to an organization's success. We all realize this. We know how important data is but sometimes we have to make some  decisions about how we communicate our data not just to get people to  agree with us or to support our proposals but  to find a way to create a sense of urgency in terms of the the data itself and the proposal behind the data and what we want to get  from people in order to support progressive change in our organizations as well.

So the concept here is really to humanize data in order to make change. It doesn't necessarily mean that you couldn't communicate data to people and get where you want to go in terms of  support and agreement, but if you're doing that it's going to be largely based on the data itself and the intellect behind the information. Depending  upon what your audience is or who your audience is they're going to see things differently. The goal here is to humanize data to persuade and engage your audience not only to agree with and to support but also to be willing to create a sense of urgency around the action that you want to be taken. 

The idea behind stories is stories resonate with people. I think if we're all looking back to some sit down that we had or some workshop that we may have attended and I'm as honest and open with all of you just as a person as an educator here, you know I don't remember the numbers but I do remember stories. I have a story that I’ll share with you that might lend itself to that, but stories that connect with me, stories that are important to me and create a sense of understanding between presenter and audience at the same time are what I remember. 

We have a tendency to steer away from stories. I remember one time I was sitting  down and I was presenting to a board of education early in my administrative career and as soon as I sat down because I was concerned that their time was precious they had a lot of things going on I jumped right into survey data that I gave to them and it was the most boring type of thing. Now, I got where I needed to be but it had nothing to do with what I was doing as a presenter to that board of education. They simply took it based upon the data. I was very fortunate because my presentation was about as dry as it ever could have been. I was nervous and there just wasn't a whole strong sense of humanity behind it. It was a shame looking back because everything I was talking about was about people, was about students, and there was such an opportunity for me to make it applicable to these members, many of whom were parents of children who were in my school at the time. The idea here is not for us to steer away from stories but to be purposeful in how we craft stories and purposeful and how we link our stories to the data. We are ultimately looking to get  the change that we want and it's not an either or situation. Data and storytelling can easily be combined if we know how to do it and we work on that skill and we work on  that craft as we move forward and that's a lot of what this course is trying to do with people. 

So as we were saying before, stories connect us to information in different ways. That when combined presents a much more complete opportunity to drive change. We know that storytelling is what makes us human. It’s how we've evolved long before even written and scripted language existed. Children do it even before they can write certainly. So no matter what the narrative is we can use storytelling to help engage our audience. 

Now the Febreze story. I think this is something that was an interesting memory that I had as an educator and I could share with you. Myself and a colleague of mine were working on a pd program for teachers in terms of feedback. We were really looking at the idea of peer coaching and giving teachers the opportunities to really interact with each other as opposed to when you're observed by your principal or by your instructional supervisor and at best if you're non-tenured you might see someone in your classroom formally three times a year and if you're tenured one or two times a year. We were looking to really help strengthen the idea of feedback for teachers and this story about Febreze came back up. We’re keeping our minds open and we're thinking about all these different things that at some point in our day could be applicable. So everybody knows Febreze and chances are pretty good at this point in time most people have a bottle somewhere in their house but the initial part around this company or this product was that it almost never came to be. So what happened when they were working through tests they were working through sampling and getting consumers to take a look to see if it worked, if it was effective, If they liked it, the  blindfold smell test all of that sort of thing. It was an overwhelming success and people loved  it. They thought it kind of covered odors or whatever you know the case exactly was but it was very well received in test markets. When they put it on the shelves what happened initially was it sat. It forced the company to think “what did we do wrong?” or “what's going on here?” Then if you remember the ad campaign this was a pretty familiar one you've got a woman here she's got a hundred cats. You know what her house smells like. I know what it smells like because my own mom doesn't have that many cats but she has a few cats and I can smell it when I walk in. Any of these sort of things that you can see on the screen carry with them odors but if you're living there you may not necessarily know it because you're part of it every day.

The whole idea as far as their ad went was going nose blind. We applied that in the same way to feedback for teachers in their classroom because of the isolated nature of being in a classroom you may or may not necessarily know exactly what your classroom looks like, what it feels like and how things are interpreted by your students.  A lot of times there might be the possibility we think our classroom looks like this our picture off on the left and you know the reality of it could be to look like the picture on the right. So if we're not getting that feedback, that sense of understanding from our colleagues on a day-to-day basis or a week to week basis, as opposed to that typical one two three times a year formal observation when you've got an administrator in your classroom and you're pulling out the best lesson that you have, you may not be getting the feedback that you really need. It was this kind of idea as far as being noseblind to things is what we really decided to do. Initially we were looking at research from John Hattie around all of the different things that lend themselves positively to student growth and effective instructional teaching. One of those things was obviously feedback. It made the connection for people because they knew the product of Febreze, everyone had it in their house but they never really knew the story of it. They just knew it to be an effective product particularly because of that have you gone nose blind ad campaign that was out there. 

It was interesting just to see teachers make the connection as they listened. They understood a little bit more of this concept of feedback that I may not be able to see in my own classroom. Now, it's much more involved than that and if we were there physically listening to teachers and looking at the presentation you'd get much more out of it but I'm hopeful that you can kind of pull this story into what we we’re doing. It's a brief example of just simple storytelling because at the time teachers didn't necessarily know where we were going as far as the presentation but once it kind of kicked over everybody we could see the heads and you could see the nod and there was an understanding as opposed to us just going in and hitting them directly with Hattie's data. So it worked effectively in that and it really kind of created a stronger sense of buy-in from the teachers who were involved and I think it lent itself to a stronger understanding of what we  were trying to do with this kind of peer coaching model. It's a small example but I definitely just wanted to kind of put that out there for the group so that we could have a little bit of an understanding as far as how storytelling does give us an opportunity to connect well with the people regardless of whatever the narrative is that we're looking to push.

Now, there's a science behind storytelling, believe it or not. There are things that happen to us emotionally and physiologically when we hear a story. So our brains actually begin to activate themselves as we listen to presentations or we listen to lectures. We begin to process information using different parts of our brain. Now when we listen to stories as opposed to when we look at and listen to straight data, we incorporate all of our lobes of our brain and we begin to engage.This is what's really kind of interesting I think as far as connecting some element of science to storytelling. Neuro coupling allows our brain to mimic the story almost as if it is as if what we're experiencing is actually happening to us. It creates this artificial reality that allows us to become part of the story to experience it in this manner. It’s the very reason why you could watch a movie or read a book, you could be sitting on your couch obviously not in any danger but experience physiological reactions such as increased heart rate and when the hair on the back of your neck stands up. If you've ever read a Stephen King novel when you've been at home, hopefully not by yourself, you know these things but it's a book. You know but when it happens I’m scared to walk around my house admittedly or when I’m watching an exciting movie we see these things and this has to do with how storytelling connects to our emotions and to ourselves physiologically. As we go through this, it's fascinating to me in many ways. There's a power here as far as what we're trying to communicate to people, how we're trying to engage with  people and how we're trying to connect with people ultimately, to get them to understand what it is that we're pushing progressively to do and what we need their ultimate support with. 

Now, if you recognize the folks on the screen here, it’s Forrest Gump, and I want you to take a look. I’m going to play this clip and it should have sound to and it should look familiar to all of you but you probably haven't looked at it in terms of this kind of research oriented grad student type of way.  

FORREST GUMP CLIP

BULLY #1: “Hey dummy are you dumb just playing stupid?” (mocking) “I’m Forrest Gump.”

JENNY: “Just run away Forrest. Run Forrest! Run away! Hurry!” 

BULLY #1: “Get the bikes! Hurry up, let's get him! “

BULLY #2: “Come on! 

BULLY#3: “Look out dummy. Here we come!” 

BULLY #1: We’re gonna get you!” 

JENNY: “Run Forrest! Run! Run Forrest!”

BULLY #1: “Come back here you!” (laughing) 

JENNY: “Run Forrest! Run!” 

FORREST: “Now you wouldn't believe it if i told you but I could run like the wind blows. From that day on, if I was going somewhere I was running.  

OLD MAN: “That boy sure is a running fool.” 

END CLIP

JONATHAN: Okay so what I would ask you to think about is what do you feel during this. Just put it in the chat. We've seen this scene before and it’s hard to believe Forrest Gump is a movie that is almost 30 years old now. I think. Yeah, 1992 if I remember. That’s crazy but what do you feel when you see Forrest and the whole situation with the mean kids and Jenny's telling him to get out of there? Then he finally breaks out of the braces which we know that he has worn pretty much his whole life. There’s an element of emotion there that we feel. One of the things that I think jumps out to me is this idea of empathy. We see empathy with Forrest and you know it kind of sits in our head. If you watch the movie you recognize how much running becomes a big thing for him and it takes him many many different  places over the course of his life. But you've got an element of empathy that exists and this is what happens as we listen to stories. We begin to gain empathy for the storytellers and for the characters who are connected to the story. So when we personalize things and we humanize things,  that connects with an audience there's an opportunity there. It’s specific. It’s oxytocin that's released in the brain. It’s the feel-good chemical. The more this happens the more we trust the speaker, the more we appreciate what they're saying and the more we align ourselves with whatever it is  that they're saying to us or whatever it is that they're communicating or presenting. The more connected you feel to the storyteller the more comfortable you feel with them the greater sense of trust that exists. Very active storytelling allows people to trust what you're saying as opposed to simply presenting data to people. It humanizes you with other people.   

Now, as you start to listen to data, it's important to remember that data doesn't necessarily change our behavior. It’s the emotions that we feel around data that potentially allows us to push forward and make decisions around the information. Think about it like this. We don't need to go into Little Red Riding Hood but we know the story. It’s an iconic story, Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf all of that sort of stuff. It stuck with us because of the nature of the story that connects. It's  a timeless piece and it's interesting too, in my opinion, because you know I have young kids but you know how many stories are rooted in things that are frightening to kids? The wolf eats Grandma and Little Red Riding Hood but that's a whole other story I think for some other presentation. If you break down Little Red Riding Hood by the facts, the data alone versus the power of the story that it connects to, this is what you get. Little Red Riding Hood has to walk 0.54 miles from point a (home) to point b (Grandma’s). She meets the wolf who runs ahead to Grandma's, eats Grandma, dresses in her clothes. When Little Red Riding Hood arrives at grandma's at 2pm she asks three questions. We’ve identified the problem that after the third question the wolf  eats Little Red Riding Hood. The solution to the situation that just happened is that a vendor, you could say if this was a presentation based upon data alone, which is the woodsman employs a tool, the axe. The expected outcome is that Grandma and Little Red Riding Hood are alive and the wolf is not. It’s a much less emotional experience when you break it down into the bulleted points that exist in front of you which is what we have here as opposed to when you hear it in story format, if you have the opportunity to give that to people. 

It’s something to think about as far as how we connect stories versus data alone or how we put the two of them together. You want to think about the idea that if we based our decision making solely on facts alone, think about all the things that we would do  differently, all the things that we know are right and we know are the things that we should be doing for ourselves but we don't necessarily do. 

Take a look at this next slide. The benefits of drinking eight glasses of water a day. That sounds great. Do we do that? Probably not. Going to the dentist. This is what I got burned on yesterday. I went to the dentist and they had to fill a cavity because I hadn't been there in a year or so or it may have been longer than that. You go every six months, take care of your teeth. Get eight hours of sleep a night. I know I'm supposed to do that. I don't for one reason or another even if I make a conscious decision because I really like the show that I want to watch after the kids have gone to bed and my wife's sitting on the couch. There's an emotional component to how I make my decisions as opposed to a factual component of  me understanding what's the best thing for me. Eight hours of sleep? I don't  know when the last time that's really happened. 

Good nutrition equals health. Eating right. We know we should do this but we don't always and that's because our emotions override what the facts by themselves will present to us. It’s the same idea here as far as how we connect with our audiences. 

If we think about the context of our story, the idea here being who. Who is involved as our audience? This is a major piece of things. This is an important element because this is going to look different regardless of what your data is and how you present it and how you tell a story to them based upon what you want them to do. You have to think about any number of  things related to your audience. Your background information is essential. Who is the audience? I'm going to approach a board of education differently than I'm going to approach a group of teachers or perhaps a group of parents, my PTA. My purpose is to get all these people active and engaged but the things and the way that I’m going to show them and build a story around what I'd like from them or what the problem is  that needs to be solved may look different. What are the biases of that group? How will they be supportive? How will they be resistant to the change that we're looking to put  forward and what data is available that'll allow me to strengthen my case as it relates to the  audience that I'm planning to sit down with? Is our audience familiar with data? With the data itself these are all examples of what is going to serve as a backdrop to the decisions that I will make or that we will make as far as how we craft a story around the problem to be solved and then how we ultimately present it to people. It’s really an interesting way to make decisions but it's a critical piece because if we don't know our audience then we're going to be in a difficult position in order to get them to find a sense of urgency in what we present. At the same time if we have the ability to segment our audiences that's probably the best way to go even if it means doing your presentation two times  because if we combine everyone and we've got this kind of mishmash of people that are all together who have different agendas and different backstories and different perceptions of what the problem is and how we're going to  present to them around solving that problem, then chances are we're not going to get  the buy-in that we want because we're not necessarily going to be targeting everyone in the  most direct and appropriate way. It’s very hard to have a comprehensive audience and at the  same time get all of them to see what you want them to see based upon what it is that you're presenting. Sometimes we don't have a choice but ideally if we can get to a place where we know our audience inside and out we're in a much better spot. We have to remember that the audience themselves, they come first. Right? We always put the audience first. Our story has to be their story. They have to connect with it. Like as I was talking about the Febreze story earlier everybody in that room had a bottle of Febreze in their house but they had no idea  about the backstory about Febreze and the product design and the field tests all of that but everybody had it and everybody could connect with it. The audience has to care. If you show empathy for your audience they will  likely show it back to you and that kind of  presents itself like what I was talking about  earlier with Little Forrest. You definitely had a sense of empathy for him with the braces and the mean kids who had been giving him a hard time pretty much throughout most of his childhood. If we have a willingness in terms of being vulnerable with things and putting ourselves out there as far as what it is that we are presenting to them and being that person that they can identify with or creating a story that they can identify with all of that is going to serve us much much better over the long haul regardless of whatever it is that we're actually presenting to them. 

The thing that we also need to  think about though is knowing what our audience is once we have all of that established and we've done all of the back work and legwork as far as how we can design a story to present to people around a problem to be solved. What’s our hook? How are we looking to pull them in? What is that connecting piece that we're looking to draw? Like we said, Febreze is a product that people will know. With Forrest, maybe not everybody but when I was his age did kids pick on me at some point? Absolutely! So I could connect with that but what's memorable about your presentation, whether it's a hook or something that you want them to take away that “ah ha moment,” that is going to urge them or create a sense of urgency in them so that they'll take action and they'll allow you to do what you need to do to support you in terms of solving the problems that exist. 

So I want to  ask you this question. When I was eight years old The Empire Strikes Back came out. I’m an 80s kid, I’m a Star Wars kid, and now I get to be a Star Wars dad which is a lot of fun. I remember when that movie came out because back then you couldn't watch things on Disney+ and you had to wait three years for  the movie to come out. The first movie I ever saw in 1977 down at Long Beach Island was Star Wars. It was at the Island Theater which is on Bay Avenue if you're familiar with it. It’s not there anymore but I was five years old. It was the first movie I ever saw and I loved it. Three years later Empire Strikes Back is coming out so what's the takeaway from Empire Strikes Back? What's the memorable moment in that movie which is probably the biggest piece of all of the Star Wars movies? Does anybody remember that? Does anybody know? What happens with Darth Vader and Luke at the end that's the memorable piece. “I am your father. I am your father.” I was counting syllables but we're talking about four simple words that everybody who saw that movie walked away from it with. It was something that we were all talking about. “Luke, I am your father.” I still remember to this day. That’s the big takeaway. 

Now I want to show you this clip. We’ll have a little fun with this. I want you to see the reaction that the cat gives over the course of this brief one-minute scene between Luke and Darth Vader as they're kind of heading towards the climax of the film. We're having fun with it but as you design your stories as it relates to your problems to be solved, think of the cat as being your audience here. That's kind of what you're looking for at its optimum point to say this is what we want to get. 

CLIP 

DARTH VADER: “It is useless to resist. Don't let yourself be destroyed as Obi-wan did. 

LUKE SKYWALKER: (Screaming) 

DARTH VADER: “There is no escape. If you only knew the power of the dark side. Obi-wan never told you what happened to your father.” 

LUKE: “He told me enough. He told me you killed him.” 

DARTH VADER: “No, I am your father.”

LUKE: “No. It's not true. That's impossible.” 

DARTH VADER: “Search your feelings. You know it to be true.” 

LUKE: (Screaming) “NO!” 

END CLIP

JONATHAN: As you're seeing that, I mean obviously it's a terrible scene certainly for Luke to find out that Darth Vader is his father but if you're seeing it through the eyes of the cat you have definitely walked away with something from this presentation that you have seen that you are not going to forget. It’s a comical take on it but as you plan you're saying to yourself  “alright can I get myself to the place of that ah ha moment” for these these people who are listening to what we're presenting to them that I know that they're not going to forget and that’s going to stick with them when they do leave and they’re going to be interested in making this happen. 

The question then becomes how do we do this? How do we begin to create these stories? How do we get to a place where we've got an idea of how to make this work? How do we connect with people? How do we connect stories to data and all this other sort of stuff. This is a large chunk of the course after we establish the piece around storytelling itself and the power of story. So, how do you do this? The first step in my opinion is you turn your computer off. Ideas come from your experiences, your thoughtful reflection and your understanding just of events that you experience yourself and being aware of those things they don't necessarily come from the computer. Allow it to be personal. The things that I've shared today are things from my childhood. These are things that are in my house. 20 years ago, like I said, these are all movies but you don't need to necessarily go that way. You want to find ways to reflect on your experiences and somehow connect that to the story that needs to be told. So how do we do it? The next step or one of the easier steps, I shouldn't say easy steps, but one of the more understandable steps as far as how you plan these sort of things out is really in a storyboard graphic. Creating a sense of concise articulation regarding your messaging to build content is going to help reduce iterations of your own work and help ensure that communication will meet its intended purpose. 

If you break this down amongst these five pieces right here: ideal, reality, problem, solution and next steps, whatever your problem is you just shut the computer off and create a storyboard. I’ll show you something as simple as this and this has six. Essentially it's a template that has six and I’m asking you to do five, but what's the ideal situation for whatever your problem is. What's the reality of what's going on? What's the problem itself? How do we find a solution? What are the next steps after we find the solution to ensure sustainability as it relates to whatever problem it is that we're looking to fix or to improve upon? You have ideal and ideal world, the reality of what's actually happening, the problem itself, the solution and then next steps. If you frame them out in a storyboard format like you could see on your screen, it gives you the opportunity to build off of that, to add to delete any number of things that allow you to really create more or less your own story around this problem that needs to be solved. That's how you begin to build a structure of what it is your presentation is ultimately going to look like. It’s not an easy thing to do and at the same time I’m just  kind of rushing over it because we're talking about the entirety of the course, but there's a lot of fundamental structural pieces here that lend themselves to how we can build from stories and the foundations of stories and move it forward into supporting presentations that are ultimately going to help us to problem solve.   

Some of the other things that the course itself will encompass from an informational perspective here not that we're going to get into it because time is short of course and we do want to open it up for people if they have some questions, but coming off the storyboard component we're going to look at how we craft the data-driven story. How do we identify and demonstrate effective elements of communication, elements of a data story and how do we apply storytelling technique to data distribution when you actually do a presentation? The ability to tell your story, the opportunity to tell your story, telling data driven stories with a rich set of digital and non-digital tools, connecting data stories to meaningful action ultimately is really what you want with that.

Obviously it's it's a bit more complicated than six bulleted points on a slide but that's that's part of what we're looking to do with this course is to put people in a position where that they can pull storytelling in, allow it to serve as the foundation for what problems we're trying to solve and then ultimately use it to create a sense of agreement and a sense of urgency with the audiences that we're going to be  sharing things with. That's the foundational component of it and again it's hard because I don't want to rush through so much of it but at the same time, I did want to  give you about 40 or 45 minutes worth of foundation that allows it to connect to the course itself. I know from talking  with Jamie and Jamie we were looking to go about 40 minutes or 45 minutes and then really open it  up for a little bit of conversation if only through the chat you know given the  circumstances around a webinar. 

So I’m going to stop the share because in the end if we're making decisions about how we're using the data it's important to understand that simply being right it's simply not enough all the time. I had mentioned how when I went before the board of education earlier in my administrative career I was fortunate but I didn't do anything to help coerce or persuade that board of ed to agree with the charge that we were looking to get from them in terms of support the data did that and I was  fortunate but sometimes you know being right in terms of the data is simply not enough. We need to be able to communicate in ways that engage and activate our audiences. Now, the best speakers that you could find if you go and you watch someone, the best speakers of their time usually are going to concentrate their facts and their data on about 25% or 30% of what is actually happening in the presentation and maybe closer to 60% or 65% on stories. If you really take the time to think about it because the takeaways that you're going to have and hopefully as they connect to the problems we solved are probably going to be rooted in some element of storytelling as opposed to simply straight up facts and data alone. You need those things and they need to be presented effectively and that's also part of the course in terms of picking your visuals and making decisions around that but if you're not allowing people to emotionally engage with you, you're lessening the opportunities that they will agree with you and that they will be willing to support you. That's kind of the foundational components of the course. 

I do apologize because I feel like I kind of rushed through that probably talked about it for a little bit more but let's open it up. If anybody has any questions in the chat or anything from Jamie or Jamie or anybody who's out there what can we do to help the group and help them to understand a little bit more about the course here? If no one has anything in the chat I will be amazingly shocked. 

JAMIE GAIRO: Jonathan I think that was really great how you really demonstrated the power of story. Especially “The Little Red Riding Hood” story was really interesting when you think about it from two different lenses and how much more powerful it is when you use the story to show the data, so that was great. 

JONATHAN: Yeah it's really interesting just when you break down something as simple as a child's story, these elements of a fairy tale into a data presentation. What would this look like? What would The Three Little Bears look like if it was a traditional bullet pointed data presentation? You find that in a sense it's not that engaging. I might sit and say “no I don't know if i'm going to lend my support to that.” It's kind of  like if you ever watch Shark Tank. Who's getting behind this and is going to give me whatever it is: their resources, their money, their time, their efforts to support us moving forward? You can bullet point out Goldilocks and the Three Bears or Three Little Pigs, I’m probably not getting behind that but I’m in when we start to kind of hear about it in more of a restored format. 

JAMIE GAIRO: One question, I’m thinking about your position as a high school administrator, especially during times of COVID everything is so different right now and it's kind of hard. How are you using data right now to support what you're doing in your work each day?

JONATHAN: Well we're definitely using data. One of the bigger things that we have to work through is health and safety. This is a primary piece and I think initially when we went back to school in September, all of our communications were really about finding ways not only to keep students safe but to keep staff safe at the same time. At that point in time it was difficult because we were relying on data that one wasn't necessarily applicable to our school and two wasn't something that people could identify with because they really haven't lived this. We've been talking about the pandemic and having it really been 12 months ago when all this started and at that point in time we were still waiting to hear about how Target's got toilet paper so we need to go and when you go keep your eyes to the ground get the things you need and then go home so there wasn't this opportunity to have an understanding for ourselves. I think, how could I have created a situation for my staff and for my parents that really allowed them to kind of understand that this is what we're doing, this is why we're doing it, you're going to be safe and I can show you why. I didn't have that luxury because we didn't have those opportunities to craft story around things as we were presenting information back in the summer and leading into the fall. Now, the fact that we've been able to live into that over the course of the school year has really put us in a position where I can pull stories of staff, I can pull stories of administrators and I can pull stories of students and what their experiences have been so that when things come up and I’ll get a parent who will sit down and whose son or daughter has been hybrid since September and they’ll say from a social and emotional perspective they're really wanting to come to school. They're concerned about  the isolation that's at home. We want our son or  daughter to try this but I don't know if this is right. Can you talk to me about this? Can you show me something? Can you present to me essentially? I’m trying to persuade a family to be able to make a decision that I think is going to be right for them but I've lived it now so I have the elements of story that exists with my staff, the elements of story that exists with my my students and their parents and I can find ways to combine that in an effort to help support these parents in terms of how they're making a decision to better serve  their child who is at home in terms of their education and their emotional well-being. There’s an example. 

JAMIE GAIRO: That was very great. Thank you. I don't see anything in the chat right now. Jamie, can you think of anything else that may come up?

JAMIE MITCHELL: No. I think this was really great. Thank you very much to both of you for doing this. It definitely gave me some things to think about in terms of what I’m doing as well so thank you for that. 

JONATHAN: Anytime. It’s an interesting thing that if you really take the time to sit and think about it, if there's an opportunity to do this sort of thing and make some different decisions about how we do present numbers you know our results could be different. They could be better and they could be more impactful depending upon who it is we're trying to positively serve based upon problem solving that exists in all of our buildings or our organizations, whatever the case may be.