Abstract Information: This paper describes how ICF leveraged conventions of narrative and storytelling to help our client and their partners internalize the implications of evaluation findings and apply them to their future plans. Presenters will describe how evaluators can use stories, more so than numbers and raw data alone, to engage clients and partners, impact emotions, and ponder the “happily ever after” and what it takes to get there. This presentation will draw on ICF’s experience as external evaluators of the Maine Department of Education’s Rethinking Responsive Education Ventures (RREV) program, which is a federally-funded initiative to promote innovation in schools. The RREV program provides awards to “Adopter Schools” to develop and pilot innovative education models, such as outdoor education or online learning initiatives, that are responsive to their specific local needs or assets. As the external evaluator, ICF helped MDOE and the Adopter Schools document pilot implementation, measure outcomes, and learn from their experiences. By nature, an innovative program is one that tries something new, and one of MDOE’s key evaluation goals was understanding how Adopter Schools in Maine planned to sustain the innovative models over time, especially after the conclusion of the federal grant and the “honeymoon period” of the new program ends. ICF will discuss how we used storytelling structures and techniques to help Adopter Schools reflect on program implementation and think about their futures in ways that helped them plan ahead and build buy-in from teachers, administrators, students, families, and other stakeholders like community partners. This paper will describe how these storytelling techniques helped Adopter School stakeholders think about the underlying innovations behind their new educational models, especially in a way that promotes sustainability within the schools and inspires other schools to take on the challenge of innovation. We will also identify potential risks in a storytelling approach and how evaluators can address them, especially by serving as a check on wishful thinking. We will also describe how evaluators can use narrative storytelling as an entry point for connecting with clients and engaging them in the evaluation process. Finally, our paper will provide practical tips on how to extract stories from traditional data collection efforts, highlight why storytelling can be impactful for program implementors working with evaluators, and discuss how storytelling in general can promote sustainability in educational programming.
