The student’s voice in the quote is the pivot point for the proposed study: Understand Me. Family sociocultural knowledge that is distant from school-sanctioned knowledge is often undervalued or goes unrecognised in schools, particularly for families who are culturally and linguistically diverse (Si’ilata, 2014). The following question guides the study: How does sharing memorable stories between a child, parent, or teacher opening for understanding?

Understand Me is a project with a partnership of school leaders, teachers and university researchers to extend and deepen knowledge of others through storied conversations. Through the listening and sharing of stories, we enter one another’s worlds and find new ways to connect, which enhance the learning-teaching pathways. Four teachers, 15 tamariki/children and their whānau/families and kaiako/teachers in a primary school participated in clusters (child-parent-teacher), meeting three times each for a total of 45 sessions. This project has evolved as we have interacted with one another, school leaders, teachers and parents in multiple meetings. Participants were enrolled as child-parent-teacher triads to engage in a sequence of three story-sharing experiences with a researcher as an attentive listener and facilitator. The aim is reciprocal understanding of another’s lived experiences and ways of meaning, and about our identities within these defined communities. 

If our stories are “us” and we craft ourselves and worlds in stories, for example, can the teacher better understand where the child is coming from, after hearing their personal story? As real partners, teachers and educational leaders will work alongside the university team as co-researchers. In this way, we will build new perspectives and understandings of children and families together that will empower learners. 

In the initial story session, child-parent-teacher will each be asked an open-ended question to initiate conversation and to become familiar with the process. In the second session, the child-parent-teacher will each share a significant and memorable, life experience. Each person’s oral story will be reconstructed as a written story and collated by triad for member checks. In the final session, storytellers in each triad will be invited to talk about the story-sharing experience and the influence of the stories on their understandings of family members or teachers, and of themselves and on any subsequent actions and imagined future actions.