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Brett Pierce    

Executive Director of Meridian Stories

Brett Pierce is the founder and Executive Director of Meridian Stories, a Digital Storytelling nonprofit for middle and high schoolers that challenges students to create digital narratives around core curricular goals. Pierce recently authored his first book with Heinneman Publishing, Expanding Literacy: "Bringing Digital Storytelling into Your Classroom," and wrote the new National Geographic Storytelling for Impact course series which in 2022 won the Gold Anthem Award.

Pierce has spent much of his professional life at Sesame Workshop in New York City, serving as a Co-Executive Producer on media projects about literacy, math, science, and conflict-resolution for youth around the world, including projects in China, Macedonia, Indonesia, Poland, Iraq, and Ecuador. He recently completed work with the Abu Dhabi-based Executive Team on the production of Sesame Street in the United Arab Emirates.

In 2021, Pierce co-led a series of digital storytelling workshops with both the Hong Kong diaspora and Iraqi CSOs about communication strategies for the humanizing the pro-democracy movement and civil participation respectively. Pierce led the Kakuma-based creative and production teams in the development and production of a radio drama – Sawa Shabab - targeting youth in the Kakuma Refugee Camp about gender equity issues, life skills and co-existence. This is the fifth season of this drama, which originated in South Sudan, that Pierce has co-executive produced.

Pierce has a BA from Kenyon College, and Masters Degrees from Middlebury College (English) and Columbia University (Education), and teaches an annual intensive at Colby College called ‘Developing Media for Social Change.’ He lives in Freeport, Maine.

Speech Topics

STORYTELLING AS A POWERFUL FRAMEWORK FOR PERSONAL AND CURRICULAR STUDENT GROWTH

Stories are the chief framework for understanding the world as a child. In the corporate world, stories are the primary vehicle for communicating the efficacy of their organization’s impact. And at the end of one’s life, stories are the most salient way to communicate who you were and who you are. So, why do we lose sight of this extraordinary communicative force in secondary school? If you know how to tell a good story, …you can rule the world. So let our students rule.

TOOLS TO ACHIEVE IN A WORLD OF OMNIPRESENT CHANGE

If students can’t imagine their ‘possible selves’ – a vision of their future selves to which to aspire – then adolescent development is stymied. And yet our current understanding of the future is fogged over with technology’s inexorable march forward. Imagining a ‘possible self’ recedes into mist. So, for what, exactly, are we preparing our students? A lot! A world of omnipresent change offers as many opportunities as it does challenges, and this discussion comes out on the side of …opportunities.

SCHOOLS AND OUR EXPANSIVE UNDERSTANDING OF MULTIPLE LITERACIES

How many literacies are there out there? From the call and response literacies of social media to the word-driven literacy of texting; the traditional paper to the digital story, it’s high time for formal education to explicitly acknowledge and productively exploit all the ways in which today’s youth communicate. …and give them the tools to do it meaningfully and impactfully. That’s where it gets sublime.

VLOGS, PODCASTS, AND GAME SHOWS, OH MY! NARRATIVE FORMATS AND THE CONTENT THEY EXCAVATE

Television and the Digital Age have spawned new storytelling structures that are often overlooked in education. Assumed to be light in carriage, they are in fact multi-layered narrative vehicles, championing critical narrative strains such as personal voice, empathy, comedy, gamification, sensory awareness, and emotional identification. There’s a lot of fun to be had inside of these various forms of storytelling.

CREATING STORIES OF SOCIAL IMPACT IN THE CLASSROOM: LESSONS FROM SOUTH SUDAN

There is a model of growth, learning and behavior change which is rooted in the creation of radio dramas designed around measurable curricular ends. Drawing from over five years working with a team of South Sudanese media producers and writers, we’ll unpack this process and transfer it to the classroom, giving you the tools to guide your students to creating digital stories designed for social impact.

ENGAGEMENT PRECEDES LEARNING: DIGITAL STORYTELLING AND TALES OF CLASSROOM JOY

One of the things you learn when you work for Sesame Workshop is the simple phrase: engagement precedes learning. If the eyes aren’t on the screen, then there is no learning. It’s the same for the classroom, although educators don’t approach the classroom with this notion of ‘entertainment’ is a valid hook into deep engagement and learning. The trick: the students are creating the entertainment, not you.

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