Project Mentor: Dr. Bill Whitney, Creative Inquiry
2025 Impact Fellows:
Sadhika Raj '27
Sophie Saunders '28
Daijah Scott ' 27
Project Description:
Can storytelling be the way to help youth communicate with and understand each other and build leadership cohorts for the future?
The Beyond Books project utilizes innovative forms of storytelling-based workshops as a restorative practice in order to help young learners with socioemotional skills such as empathy and self-awareness, which, in turn, build stronger schools and communities. Rooted in a resistance to the school-to-prison pipeline (i.e. the systematic funneling of youth into the carceral system through the use of punitive measures in schools), previous teams created an early-version workshop toolkit which is designed to open up space for students to think critically about these punitive measures and the effect which they have on the lives of young people. Through the delivering of workshops and implementation of our toolkit in local Bethlehem-area schools and community organizations, in 2026 we will be gathering more formal data to better understand this tool's effectiveness. In the coming year, the Beyond Books team will be undertaking a longitudinal research study as well as continuing to pilot and refine the toolkit itself. Our goal is to have the toolkit be a resource available nationwide to both educators and students that can apply to many different cultural and geographical contexts.
All majors are welcome to apply. Students interested in improving K-12 education, storytelling / theatre / performance, and social justice issues would be particularly relevant members of the team.