Storytelling as Resistance: Amplifying Silenced Voices in Education

Far too often, students from traditionally underserved communities feel powerless within the school system. Many insist that teachers and principals do not listen to them. This article discusses how storytelling and counter-storytelling can be effective strategies to counteract racism, silenced voices, and the normalization of white privilege. While the authors correctly identify the harmful effects of majoritarian storytelling on students of color, their exploration of this promising concept remains somewhat underdeveloped.

The Violence of Silence

Silence: the absence of sound, thought, and feeling.

When a person is silenced, it denies them the basic human right of expression. On a more complex level, the ability to engage in dialogue allows individuals to reason, explain, and understand. Freire (1973) explains that dialogue, "founding itself in love, humanity and faith, becomes a horizontal relationship of which mutual trust between the dialoguers is the logical consequence."

Silence—or the act of being silenced—creates the opposite effect: a hostile, oppressive relationship between students of color and their white teachers. The authors make a compelling claim that storytelling and counter-storytelling could challenge traditional white male narratives that reinforce false and damaging stereotypes and prejudices, ultimately returning voices to silenced students.

Who Controls the Narrative Controls the Future

"He who controls the language controls the masses." — Saul Alinsky

The white male narrative typically presents African American history as incidental to European and American history, insinuating that African Americans have no authentic or valuable connection or contribution to humanity. This academic positioning brainwashes and dehumanizes students. Solorzano and Yosso (2014) correctly identify how majoritarian storytelling produces, reinforces, and protects oppressive systems like white privilege, racism, sexism, and classism.

By centering dominant narratives, schools perpetuate what Gloria Ladson-Billings calls the "master narrative"—a story that justifies existing power structures while erasing the experiences and contributions of marginalized groups. Counter-storytelling disrupts this pattern by validating alternative perspectives and challenging the supposed neutrality of dominant discourse.

The Promise and the Gaps

Storytelling and counter-storytelling could be effective tools in giving students an academic space to discuss their needs, desires, experiences, and aspirations. This approach could help students feel more validated and become more self-aware. However, this exciting concept feels deflated by its underdevelopment in the article.

The authors leave several critical questions unanswered:

• What age or grade level can utilize this strategy effectively? Elementary students need different approaches than high school students.

• Who creates the stories? Do students develop their own narratives, or do they engage with existing stories that resonate with their experiences?

• What is the actual implementation? Are stories read aloud, written, performed, or shared digitally? What does a storytelling session actually look like in practice?

• How does this integrate into existing curriculum? Many educators would be interested in how storytelling and counter-storytelling could be adapted to an ELA unit or incorporated across disciplines.

• What support do teachers need? White teachers, in particular, may need guidance on facilitating these conversations without centering their own discomfort or perpetuating harm.

Moving Forward

Despite these gaps, storytelling and counter-storytelling represent a unique and powerful tool to help students and teachers unpack preconceived notions about culture and increase empathetic pedagogy. When students see their experiences reflected in curriculum and hear their voices validated in classroom discourse, education shifts from an oppressive force to a liberating one.

For this strategy to reach its full potential, educators and researchers must develop more concrete frameworks for implementation. We need:

• Grade-specific protocols that outline developmentally appropriate approaches

• Sample lesson plans and units that demonstrate integration across content areas

• Professional development resources that prepare teachers to facilitate difficult conversations

• Assessment strategies that honor diverse forms of expression and storytelling

• Research on outcomes that documents the impact on student engagement, identity development, and academic achievement

Storytelling has always been a tool of resistance and survival in marginalized communities. By bringing this practice into the classroom intentionally and systematically, we can begin to dismantle the majoritarian narratives that have silenced so many students for so long. The question is not whether storytelling works—oral tradition has sustained cultures for millennia—but rather how we can honor this practice within formal educational settings in ways that are authentic, sustainable, and transformative.