The Stories We Ask Others to Tell

There is a moment in every writing retreat that I have learned to recognize.

It comes just before someone reads aloud at a writing conference with me. The eyes don’t make eye contact. The throat clears. Almost always, the preface arrives before the story does: This probably isn’t very good. Or, I don’t really write. Or, I’m not sure this is what you were looking for.

By the time the words are spoken, the apology has already taken up space in the room.

I have heard this from students, veteran teachers, first-year educators, principals, and instructional coaches. No matter how many times we name it or how many times we say that writing is communal or that perfection is not the point, the instinct to minimize oneself arrives early and uninvited.

When I first began facilitating narrative spaces, I approached the work the way I had learned to approach writing as a middle school English teacher. My instinct was to remove barriers. To reassure. To encourage. To tell people, truthfully, that what they had to say mattered.

That instinct still lives in me. What I did not understand for quite a long time was how much power sat quietly inside that reassurance. In the classroom, encouragement is a tool for growth. In institutional spaces, it becomes something else. It shapes what feels safe to say. It signals what kind of story belongs. It suggests, often unintentionally, what will be valued once the writing leaves the room.

Because I am not just holding space. I am shaping it.

I choose the prompts. I frame the purpose. I explain what a “field narrative” is and what it might do once it travels beyond the table where it was written. I help determine whether a story is ready to be shared publicly, revised privately, or held back altogether. Even when I say, This is for you, the structure surrounding the writing suggests otherwise.

The habits I carried with me from the classroom, scaffolding, modeling, and guiding, did not disappear when I moved into facilitation. They scaled. And with that scale came a different kind of responsibility, one I had not yet fully named.

There is an invisible curriculum in narrative work, and I am one of its instructors. Over time, I began to notice the kinds of stories that surfaced most easily. Stories of perseverance. Stories of growth. Stories that bent toward hope, even when they began in pain. I noticed which drafts participants hesitated to read aloud, and which ones drew nods of recognition from the group. I noticed which stories people asked me about later: Is this okay to share? Should I take this part out?

Those questions lingered with me longer than the stories themselves. Because embedded in them was a deeper uncertainty: Who is this story for? And just beneath that: What are the consequences of telling it honestly?

There are stories I encourage people to write, and stories I quietly hope they don’t.

Not because they are unimportant. But because I know the systems they move through. I know how easily a story can be misunderstood, flattened, or repurposed once it leaves the care of its author. I know that vulnerability, when removed from context, can become evidence against the very people who offered it in good faith.

This is the ethical tension at the heart of narrative work in education, especially when it is housed inside institutions. We invite educators to bring their full selves to the page, but we cannot always guarantee what will happen to those selves once the story circulates. We say your voice matters while working within systems that have long ignored, disciplined, or extracted voice. We celebrate authenticity, but often only the versions that are legible, productive, or palatable to those in power.

I sit with this contradiction constantly.

As an intermediary, positioned between schools and systems, between lived experience and policy discourse, I am close enough to hear the stories people do not publish. I am trusted with moments that never appear in reports or presentations. I carry narratives that shape my understanding of what schools need, even when those narratives cannot be cited, quoted, or shared.

This proximity is a privilege. It is also a responsibility. Because storytelling is not neutral. The act of inviting someone to write already assumes that their experience can be translated into meaning, that it can serve a purpose beyond itself. When we create narrative spaces, we are not just asking what happened? We are asking what kind of knowledge counts. And, implicitly, what kind of story will move the room?

I have learned to listen for what is missing as much as what is said.

Sometimes the absence is protective. Sometimes it is imposed. Sometimes it signals a boundary the writer is not ready, or not willing, to cross. My role is not to push past that boundary. My role is to recognize it, respect it, and consider what it reveals about the conditions under which educators are being asked to speak.

In recent years, I have changed how I facilitate these spaces. I speak less about courage and more about consent. I talk openly about the audience and the afterlife. I name that not every story needs to be shared publicly to be meaningful. I remind participants that withholding can be an act of wisdom rather than fear.

The truth is, some of the most important stories resist resolution. They sit in tension. They raise questions without answering them. They make us uncomfortable, not because they are poorly told, but because they reveal the limits of the systems we operate within.

Those stories are harder to hold. They require restraint. They ask more of the listener than the teller. I am still learning how to sit with that. I am still learning how to be honest about the power I carry in these rooms, and how to use it with care. I am still learning how to invite others into narrative work without assuming ownership over what they produce. I am still learning when to step forward and when to step back.

What I know now is this: asking someone to tell their story is never a small thing. It is an invitation that comes with weight, whether we acknowledge it or not.

If we are going to continue this work, if we are going to ask educators to write themselves into a field that has too often been written over them, then we must be willing to interrogate the structures we build around their voices. Not to silence them. But to ensure that when they speak, they are not standing alone.