"Just not like TFA"
What we can learn about narrative voice from Teach for America and the Sunrise Movement
A couple months ago, I was helping a partner org brainstorm their narrative voice. “How do you want to come off?” I asked. “What do you want your audiences to feel about your work? Or about you as a team?”
One woman blurted: “I just don’t want to sound like TFA. Does that make any sense?”
It did. Everybody in the room knew exactly what she meant. If there's one organization that defined the narrative voice of the education sector for almost two decades, it’s Teach for America.
Consciously or unconsciously, for much of the 2000s and 2010s, reform-oriented districts, charter schools, and nonprofits sounded eerily TFA-ish. Many of them still do. Their voices echoed its nebulous optimism of “one day, all children,” its virtuous urgency about “the achievement gap,” its gentle pity over the plight of poor children, and its rosy confidence in the “transformational” young teachers who made up its ranks.
At the time, Teach for America’s voice worked really well. Theirs was one of the loudest and most influential in the education reform movement. They reaped millions of dollars in donations. Their recruits—myself among them—joked about drinking the TFA Kool-Aid, because we were that fanatically dedicated to the mission.
At the time. Teach for America’s voice worked because it was a right fit for the moment. Like high-waisted pants and crop-tops, narrative voice comes in and out of style depending on the social ethos. But the voice that worked for the social ethos of 2009, when I was in the classroom, doesn’t work for the social ethos of today. And while TFA has shifted its voice accordingly, many of the orgs that bloomed in its wake have not.
Are these orgs oblivious? disconnected? deliberately going against the grain? Some, maybe. But probably the greater reason that social sector storytelling often sounds so dissonant from the current social ethos is that most orgs don’t think about voice at all.
Good organizational storytelling does three things for an audience. It makes them know, think, or feel things about the organization, its work, and the issue at hand. Voice is the piece of storytelling that does the heavy lifting around feeling.
Whenever I work with orgs on storytelling, they’ve almost always considered what they want their audiences to know (schools are disproportionately expelling Black students). Sometimes they’ve already considered what they want their audiences to think (our approach to building positive school culture sounds like a promising solution). But almost never have they considered what they want their audience to feel (outraged? empowered? inspired?) or how they want their org personality to come off (collaborative? warm? feisty?)
Beyond missing an opportunity to communicate their identity, these orgs also risk sounding out of touch.
for example…
Let’s compare the voices of Teach for America circa 2009, when I was teaching, with the Sunrise Movement today. If you’re unfamiliar, the Sunrise Movement is a youth-driven org aimed at stopping climate change and green job creation. Its narrative voice is arguably resonant with today’s social ethos.
For each org, we’ll look at the three basic building blocks of narrative voice:
point-of-view, which you might remember from middle school ELA as first person I/we, second person you, and third person he/she/they
tone/mood, which is self-explanatory; and
style, which is basically how you put your words together, e.g. succinct and to-the-point or lyrical and long-winded?
Here are some soundbytes from old TFA emails, newsletters, and videos that I crowdsourced:
"My intention in joining TFA is to…try in some small way to better the lives of community members with whom I will interact.”
"Teaching in an urban school district was never how I envisioned my first two years out of college... I'm joining this movement to be a part of something so much bigger than myself or my career and to make a difference in the lives of those who need it most."
“By increasing our incoming corps by 50 percent, students in the region could be taught by a corps member every year–an environment that would dramatically increase our ability to close the achievement gap.”
“Our corps members work relentlessly to lead change for their students. They are audaciously challenging low expectations and achieving results few believed were possible… ”
TFA circa 2009 uses first person to talk about themselves and third person to talk about the students, schools, and communities they serve—conveying a feeling that “us” and “them” are separate. An overload of adverbs like “dramatically,” “relentlessly,” and “audaciously” paired with phrases like “few believed were possible” and “so much bigger than myself” conveys a sense of self sacrifice and grandeur. The style—which you can intuit from the space-saving ellipses as much as anything else—is lofty, loquacious, and self-indulgent.
Basically, this voice that really worked for TFA and which then spread like wildfire through the education sector, reflected a social ethos that admired bright, ambitious, young people with the nobility of character to pause their careers and save Black and Brown communities. This voice doesn’t fly today.
In contrast, here are some sound bytes from the Sunrise Movement’s website today:
For decades, our communities have been ignored – by politicians, by the wealthy who profit off our backs, and even by the environmental movement.
We bring our neighbors, families, classmates, community leaders, and thousands of unorganized young people into our movement. Building a mass movement of ordinary people across race and class is the only way we transform society.
We all have something to lose to the climate crisis and something to gain in coming together. We tell our stories about race, class, where we’re from, and who we are to remind ourselves and the public of that truth. This is how we build a powerful movement.
The Sunrise Movement uses the collective first person “we” to talk about both themselves and their communities—conveying the sense that there is no separation; we are all in it together. The naming of “politicians, the wealthy who profit off our backs, and… the environmental movement” contrasted with “our neighbors, families, classmates…” further builds this feeling of collective outrage, responsibility, and power. Finally, the style—simple sentences that repeatedly begin with “We”—conveys a mobilizing energy.
Basically, this narrative voice reflects a current social ethos of collective action against systemic power.
long story short…
If you check out Teach for America’s website today, its narrative voice has shifted. They blatantly name the system as the problem, use the collective “we” with more inclusivity, and employ language like “we are made of people just like you.” It’s much more in tune with today’s ethos.
It’s important to name that sometimes—most times—the social ethos is flawed. What does that mean for orgs who don’t want their narrative voice to reflect that ethos? What if an education org in 2009 was already reaching for the social ethos of today?
I’m all for the visionaries! The critical thing is that orgs are aware of the social ethos, so that they can align their narrative voice to it—or build a narrative voice that is intentionally counter to it. In a future post, I’ll highlight a couple orgs that are doing just that.
Bottom line: social sector orgs—especially because we’re in the social sector!!!—need to be thoughtful about our narrative voice. Not only does voice generate the feeling that will spur our audiences to action, but it also conveys our identity and values as an organization.
