Overview

This masterclass is designed for practitioners — people who facilitate, teach, organize, or accompany others through change. The through-line is simple: you cannot invite others into story without having gone through it yourself. So we do both, in sequence and in parallel.

The arc moves from knowing story → making story → facilitating story → releasing story into the world. By the time participants are designing curricula in weeks six and seven, they have been inside the process for five weeks. That embodied knowledge is the credential.

Final Deliverables

Autoethnographic narrative piece

1,000–2,500 words. A personal story that uses the writer’s own life as a lens on something larger: a historical moment, a community, a calling. Drafted and revised across weeks 3–8.

Contextualized story curriculum

A facilitator’s guide designed for their specific setting — from a single 90-minute workshop to a semester-long course — grounded in the facilitation principles of the masterclass. Drafted across weeks 6–8.

Curriculum
(subject to revision)

Phase 1 — Knowing Story  (Weeks 1–2)

Session 1  What story is — and what it does

Where does story live in a life? Participants map their own story lineage and locate themselves as practitioners. Why this moment in history demands story.

Writing practice:  A first memory of story’s power in your own life

Homework:  300-word reflection on your story origin — where did story first become a tool for you?

Session 2  The shape of a story — structure, tension, and truth

Story anatomy: the wound, the threshold, the turn, the witness. Why structure liberates rather than constrains. The personal as political — how individual stories carry historical weight.

Writing practice:  A moment when your story — or your understanding of your story — changed

Homework:  Identify the “turn” in a story you know well (your own or someone else’s)

Phase 2 — Making Story  (Weeks 3–5)

Session 3  Voice, body, and the autoethnographic lens

What it means to use your own life as primary research. Joe models the practice — a brief reading from his own autoethnographic work. Voice as the irreducible thing. Exercises in finding the sentence that only you could write.

Writing practice:  Draft an opening

Homework:  Expand to 500 words. Don’t edit — follow the voice wherever it goes.

Session 4  Resistance, resilience, and the story we need right now

Story as a tool of both witness and refusal. Testimonial traditions: from Highlander to oral history to the digital age. How do we write into grief, uncertainty, and historical rupture without drowning in it? Story as a practice of becoming.

Writing practice:  The thing you need to say right now — the sentence you’ve been holding

Homework:  Bring 750 words.

Session 5  The draft workshop — revision as discovery

Small group feedback using a structured listening protocol (not workshopping — listening). What lands? What wants more? Joe introduces the principle of “the story behind the story.” Revision as a deepening, not a fixing.

Writing practice:  Read aloud in triads, structured response: What did you hear? What stayed with you?

Homework:  Revised draft, 1,000–1,500 words.

Phase 3 — Facilitating Story  (Weeks 6–7)

Session 6  Creating the conditions — facilitation as an art

What makes a room safe enough for story? Trust, permission, and the ethics of witness. Context matters: facilitating youth vs. elders vs. activists vs. patients — same principles, different registers. Joe’s core facilitation framework. Introduction to the curriculum deliverable.

Writing practice:  Design a 30-minute opening ritual for your context

Homework:  1-page sketch of your context and audience — who are these people, what do they carry?

Session 7  From prompt to process — building a story curriculum

How to design story experiences across scales: from a 90-minute workshop to a semester course. The essential elements: invitation, safety, practice, reflection, witness, release. Adapting for context: K–12, public health, community organizing, higher ed, pastoral care. Peer critique of curriculum sketches.

Writing practice:  Curriculum architecture workshop — map your arc on paper

Homework:  Full curriculum draft: 3 to 6 sessions sketched with learning arc, key prompts, and facilitation notes.

Phase 4 — Releasing Story  (Week 8)

Session 8  Completion, witness, and the practitioner’s path forward

Final sharing: each participant reads 3 minutes from their piece. Group witness, not critique. Joe closes with a reflection on what it means to carry this work into the world — the ethical obligations, the joy, the ongoing nature of the practice. Resources, community, what’s next.

Writing practice:  Final narrative piece read aloud (3 minutes) — witness circle

Homework:  Finalized narrative piece (1,000–2,500 words) + curriculum draft due.