Don’t start with the equation

A practical storytelling structure for STEM teachers, professors and mentors who want students to understand difficult ideas rather than merely memorise them.

I recently had a conversation with a university professor about incorporating more storytelling to better connect with engineering students. I showed him how to use the “Voyage & Return” story plot. And then, I had my live special Communication Lessons From… Max King where we built a tech story live. In that conversation, I realised how the superpower of storytelling is the hidden dialogue between the audience and the speaker: the audience asks the right questions at the right time, and the story fills in the blanks. That way, the learning is locked in. And the information can be retrieved easily. This is gold for teaching!

Among the 5 STEM Story Plots I wrote about before, the “Voyage & Return” probably works best for teaching. However, it is not only for classrooms. If you want to explain a difficult part of your method or analysis (like at a conference👇), you can use it too.

Voyage & Return

“Voyage & Return” stories involve the protagonist embarking on a journey to an unfamiliar world. They face trials and tribulations throughout their journey before ultimately returning home, often changed or enlightened.

Three main tropes:

• The (s)hero “falls” into another world

• A thrilling escape or chase

• The (s)hero brings something back with them (often knowledge and enlightenment)

The Bernoulli example

In my conversation with the professor I mentioned above, I used the Bernoulli equation as an example. Instead of: “Here’s Bernoulli’s equation.”

Invite the students to be a part of the story:

“Let’s imagine we’re eighteenth-century physicists. We notice something strange. Every experiment contradicts our intuition.

Water flows faster through a narrower section of a pipe. Our intuition might say that faster flow should mean greater pressure. But measurements show the opposite. Why?

What can we say about the energy of the fluid as it moves through the pipe? …”

Now the equation is not the starting point. It is the answer to a series of questions the students are asking.

Students leave the familiar world. They ask questions and encounter surprises. They “return” understanding something they didn’t before.

That’s literally the “Voyage & Return” plot.

Use a simple test before you introduce a concept, ask yourself: what questions does my audience need to have in mind for this key information to feel like the final answer?

Now, use this five-step structure to explore a difficult concept:

1. Start in the familiar world (assumption, intuition).
   Begin with what your audience already expects to be true.

2. Introduce the anomaly.
   Show them an observation, result or problem that does not fit that expectation.

3. Let them make a prediction (yes, ask them to venture ideas live).
   Ask: “What do you think is happening here?”
   This is where they become participants rather than listeners.

4. Travel through the investigation - guide them to ask the right questions at the right time.
   Introduce each part of the method, model or equation only when it helps ask the next question.

5. Return with a new understanding.
   Revisit the original observation and concept with the newfound knowledge.

Your Coach,

Yulia