Today we can communicate in more ways than ever and yet it often feels like we’re talking right past each other.

Share a news article on Facebook. Or an infographic loaded with statistics. Maybe a quote of Martin Luther King, Jr. that aligns with your political views.

Then wait. Wait for that one person to make a sarcastic comment, or a breathless one that lays out every reason your vaguely expressed viewpoint was wrong, and watch the arguments pile up in your notifications, making you regret the post in the first place.

What’s going on here? How do we talk to each other in ways that stick?

In real life and on social media, I’ve seen storytelling act as the most powerful rhetorical device - better than that perfect statistic, emotional pleas, or any claim from an expert authority.

When Baltimore’s protests over Freddie Gray were overshadowed by riots and looting, some people responded with stats about his neighborhood, others compared rioters to animals, and one even opined that “charter schools save cities” (that one was not well received, to say the least).

Having been a teacher in Baltimore for several years, I saw many of my teacher friends sharing stories about the kids they taught. They put up photos of laughing kids in uniforms and they shared stories of kids succeeding when everything around them told them they couldn’t.

On my Facebook feed, some of my own students shared their stories. D—, an avid gamer, saw his video game store had been looted. Others shared their fear as they realized their buses home were canceled and they were stranded in an area surrounded by cops in riot gear and hundreds of other teenagers, some of whom were agitated.

In all of these snippets, you’re not faced with arguments, just shared experiences that don’t have a political viewpoint. And that’s the power of storytelling: it can share any side of an argument you want, but you can’t call it anything but the truth.

On this blog, there will be stats, poignant quotes, and news updates. We’ll talk about what we’re proud of here at Raise the Bar. But if we’re doing it right, we’ll mostly share stories that show the human side to all of these things: parents overcoming fears and challenges with their kids, teachers putting days of work into a 50-minute lesson, and the kids who surprise us every day.

Feel free to comment on our stories and to share your own.