One Small Step: DIY Participant Course

This short course will prepare you to record a One Small Step DIY interview. It should take no more than 10 minutes to complete. Select “welcome” below to get started.

All Our Voices

StoryCorps DIY: All Our Voices provides resources for libraries and organizations interested in encouraging conversations about health in their communities. We’ve shared the materials in this course to support in-person and virtual community engagement programming through recorded conversations, story-sharing and discussion, and exploration of the StoryCorps Archive.

Take the course to learn more about embedding health and wellness programming into your library. Click “login to enroll” above and then browse the lessons below to get started.

One Small Step: StoryCorps Participant Course

This short course will prepare you for your upcoming One Small Step interview. It should take no more than 10 minutes to complete. Select “welcome” below to get started.

Commemorate

Welcome

Commemorate is a set of resources designed for organizations serving clients living with memory loss. This self-directed course offers insights and best practices on beginning a recording program to honor and preserve the stories of your clients.

With case studies and audio examples from StoryCorps’ Memory Loss Initiative, we hope that this course will help you to adapt the StoryCorps recording model to benefit your clients and your organization.

For more general information on creating a StoryCorps-inspired recording project at your organization, including equipment recommendations, archiving best practices and more, please also visit our DIY Fundamentals Course.

About StoryCorps’ Memory Loss Initiative

StoryCorps launched our Memory Loss Initiative in 2006 to reach out to people affected by memory loss. Through this work, we partnered with more than 180 organizations to offer families the opportunity to record a StoryCorps interview for posterity. StoryCorps’ Memory Loss Initiative aimed to support and encourage those with memory loss to share their stories and have meaningful conversations with people they love.

Since the launch of the Memory Loss Initiative, StoryCorps has recorded over 1,800 interviews with people living with memory loss.

How to Use This Course

This course builds off of our StoryCorps DIY Fundamentals Course to provide specific best practices and ideas for organizations like yours that provide care to those living with memory loss. We hope that this course will help begin or enhance  your own reminiscence program.

Below you can access each lesson in this self-directed course. Feel free to skip around and seek out the tools and sections that best suit your needs!

The Great Listen

Welcome to The Great Listen 2024! This course includes everything you need to bring StoryCorps into your classroom and be part of this year’s Great Thanksgiving Listen. Click “login to enroll” above and then browse the lessons below to get started.

Looking for more educational resources? Our StoryCorps DIY: Education course includes additional tools and lesson plans for your classroom.

If you have any general feedback or stories of success, please reach out to us at [email protected]. We would love to hear from you.

Have you used the Great Thanksgiving Toolkit in your classroom? We’d love your feedback! Click below to fill out a brief survey.

One Small Step DIY: Planners Guide

This course offers resources for groups and organizations seeking to create their own StoryCorps-inspired One Small Step recording project. 

With the resources provided in this course, you will: 

• Gain a deep understanding of the StoryCorps interview process and One Small Step.
• Learn our practices for recruiting participants and matching them for conversations.
• Prepare yourself with our best practices for facilitating these conversations and creating supportive environments for your participants.

Support for One Small Step

One Small Step is made possible by the generous support of The Hearthland Foundation, the Fetzer Institute, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Stand Together Trust.

Education

StoryCorps Education makes the StoryCorps mission come alive for your classroom, supporting adults and youth in building relationships and creating more compassionate schools, families, and communities. With our lesson plans and resources, young people will:

• Discover the power of their own voice and know that their experiences and stories matter
• Learn about the power and importance of listening
• Gain empathy and understanding for people who are different from themselves
• Find strength in stories of people like themselves who succeeded despite personal challenges and social barriers.

The resources in this course will provide teachers and mentors with powerful tools for engaging and empowering youth in classroom and community settings. Additionally, connect directly with other educators and StoryCorps staff in our StoryCorps in the Classroom Facebook group.

Road to Resilience

StoryCorps DIY: Road to Resilience, created in partnership with the New York Life Foundation, provides resources to organizations interested in starting their own storytelling program with kids in grief and tools for furthering dialogue about the impact of childhood grief. This course is a compilation of insights and best practices from StoryCorps’ partnerships with bereavement centers across the United States. It includes tips for creating a supportive recording environment for young people and families impacted by grief, suggested questions lists, audio segments, animations, discussion guides, and more.

Click “login to enroll” above and then browse the lessons below to get started. For more general information on creating a StoryCorps-inspired recording project at your organization, please also visit our DIY Fundamentals Course.

Fundamentals

StoryCorps DIY Fundamentals offers tools and resources for community organizations seeking to create their own StoryCorps-inspired recording project. Gain best practices from StoryCorps staff and partners on recording, archiving and sharing stories in your community.

With multimedia resources and guides, this self-directed course provides instructions and insights on how to:

• Promote listening: Preserve the life stories of your community members, and facilitate meaningful interactions between community members.
• Build an archive: Develop your organization’s oral history collection, and add voices and perspectives that are currently missing.
• Create dynamic public programming: Bring new audiences to your organization by inviting them to record their own stories, or to take part in listening events.
• Partner in new ways with peer organizations: Forge meaningful connections with partner organizations for a shared project goal.

This course is a great starting point for any group or organization that wishes to create a sustainable community program around storytelling.