Educational Wellness Programs for Communities
Create space for personal reflection, promote critical thinking skills, or just learn something new! Novel Exchanges guides participants through a story and discussion designed to leave a lasting impact.
Facilitated Short Story Discussions
Your facilitator introduces a short story by teaching about the author and relevant historical context, then reads aloud as participants follow along with a provided copy of the story. At key moments, your facilitator will pause to ask questions about the plot and characters, encouraging participants to make connections to their own lives. An immersive storytelling experience that has been described by participants as similar to “listening to one of those old stories on the radio,” these sessions reinforce cognitive skills and inspire dialogue about the shared human values we learn from great literature.
Interactive Lectures: Stories from History
Novel Exchanges presents an unbiased, source-based, interactive lecture with engaging visuals and discussion questions. Each lesson will get participants thinking critically about a story from history — and reflecting on what our history can teach us about the world we live in today.
Tell Your Story: Arts-Integrated Storytelling
Everyone has a story to share! Novel Exchanges encourages you to share your own story in response to a variety of mediums, including writing, collage, painting, and drawing. These arts-integrated storytelling activities pair perfectly with our other featured activities, or they can be done independently.
Schedule a free consultation about bringing Novel Exchanges to your organization!
What Happens When We Talk About Stories?
Story-driven dialogue…
- Fosters reflection about shared values
- Builds empathy and connection across diverse perspectives
- Strengthens communication and collaboration
- Encourages critical thinking and problem solving around differences of opinion
Who benefits from our work?
- senior living communities
- wellness centers
- community groups
- non-profit organizations
- youth programs
- corporate teams
- professional development cohorts
- schools
What I Bring:
- Skilled, inclusive facilitation
- Expertise in guiding meaningful, empathy-driven dialogue
- Ability to make literature accessible to all participants
- Experience with diverse groups and learning needs
- Trauma-informed and culturally responsive practices
What Community Members Say About Novel Exchanges
Having the story read during the group rather than prior to the group allowed for residents throughout our entire building to feel welcome. They found it particularly helpful to have both audio and words to follow along with. I was personally very impressed with Jesse’s ability to adjust questions in a way that allowed for all residents, regardless of cognitive abilities, to participate in a meaningful way…It truly was a nice change of pace and beautifully done version of a book club that the residents loved.
We ALL loved the discussion of a supercomputer from the 1950’s and AI technology today. Jesse did a fantastic of prompting the residents with discussion questions that got them discussing the technological advances they have in their lifetimes. Jesse brought the intergenerational piece to the program without even marketing it – the group loved having a younger person leading the group and what was refreshing to all of us was how engaging he was and how he drank up and pondered everyone’s views and discussion points.
I am on my own spiritual journey and this story highlighted the tension between ‘worldly’ concerns and the spiritual. [I really enjoyed] when one person in the group spoke about a community that sees one person’s illness as the community’s illness. [The session made me think deeply about] the giving up of ‘self’ for the benefit of all. [It was also] interesting to think about how different people experience the same story. And feeling a sense of ‘that’s amazing’ rather than judgement.
Arts-Integrated Extension Activities
The fun doesn’t have to stop after reading and discussing a story! I offer extension activities where participants respond to a prompt and apply a theme from the story to their own lives. I provide the materials and instruction for:
- collage or drawing
- zine-making or cartoon-drawing
- creative writing
- watercolor monster creations
To learn more, just ask about arts-integrated extension activities during our free consultation!
Do you like the idea of a Novel Exchanges session, but need to make some changes to best fit the needs of your community? I am happy to work with you to ensure that your participants are able to meaningfully engage in the Novel Exchanges experience.
Whether you are looking to…
- stay within a specific timeframe (45, 60, 90, 120 minutes)
- increase the rigor of the discussion with cooperative, team-building activities
- ensure that neurodiverse populations of mixed literacy levels will be included