CircleBridge: How Stories Bring Us Together

“Interested in the kind of education that builds bridges rather than walls? That’s powered not only by time-tested ideas but by compelling storytelling? That honors indigenous voices and reaches across cultural divides? That has the potential for personal and social transformation? Then this is the book for you. Scott Simpson and Sharla Steever write first and foremost from on-the-ground practice, not theory. I can testify from personal experience how reliable their practices are when it comes to creating trustworthy space for difficult conversations and deep learning. I urge you to join them on their journey and learn about the proven potential of the CircleBridge approach.”   —Parker J. Palmer (author of “The Courage to Teach,” “A Hidden Wholeness,” “Healing the Heart of Democracy,” and “Let Your Life Speak”)

In today’s post-COVID world, schools are facing unprecedented challenges. Political and cultural polarization has seeped into classrooms, creating division among students, educators, and communities. Fear, mistrust, and misunderstanding have become barriers to meaningful learning, while educators struggle to create safe, inclusive spaces for all students.
CircleBridge offers a way forward.

This book is more than just a collection of stories—it’s a blueprint for bridging divides, fostering connection, and rebuilding school culture in an era of deep polarization. Rooted in real experiences from educators, students, and community leaders, CircleBridge equips readers with practical tools for navigating ideological tensions, addressing cultural misunderstandings, and transforming conflict into opportunities for growth.

Through personal narratives, poetry and song, CircleBridge illustrates how storytelling fosters empathy and helps individuals see beyond political labels and cultural biases. It introduces frameworks like the Intercultural Development Continuum (IDC) and Circle of Trust, which guide educators in engaging with difference in ways that lead to meaningful dialogue rather than division.
Key takeaways from CircleBridge:

• Building Bridges, Not Walls: Learn how schools can shift from polarization to mutual understanding by fostering safe spaces for honest conversations.
• The Power of Storytelling: Discover how sharing lived experiences can break down biases and create genuine connections between students and teachers.
• Navigating Post-COVID Tensions: Address the stress, trauma, and social fractures that have intensified since the pandemic, and learn strategies for rebuilding trust in school communities.
• Actionable Tools for Educators: Utilize frameworks like the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) and Touchstones for Connection to guide difficult conversations and cultivate a culture of inclusion.
• Honoring Indigenous & Marginalized Voices: CircleBridge highlights the importance of Indigenous knowledge, storytelling, and cultural perspectives in creating educational environments where every student feels seen and valued.

At a time when ideological battles threaten the foundation of education, CircleBridge provides a hopeful, actionable approach to restoring school culture. It is a must-read for educators, administrators, and anyone committed to healing divisions and fostering learning environments where students—and communities—can thrive together.

👉 Join the movement. Start building bridges today.

• Read a sample from the book!

• Interviewed on SDPB Radio’s “In the Moment“

Helpful CircleBridge-Related GPT Resources

• ND and SD Indigenous Learning Assistant
• Intercultural Growth Guide
• Levels of Listening Guide
• Lesson Designer for Multi-Lingual Learners
• Elder Wisdom Companion

Human Shaped Learning: Beings Before Doings

Dr. Scott Simpson & Ms. Sharla Steever

In an era of standardized testing and one-size-fits-all solutions, Human-Shaped Learning offers a transformative reminder: education is—and has always been—a profoundly human act.

This book centers the sacred, often-overlooked truth that learning happens best through trust, connection, and care. With equal parts insight and heart, authors Scott Simpson and Sharla Steever guide us through a new way of seeing classrooms—not as performance spaces, but as communities of becoming. Drawing on research, personal story, and the lived wisdom of educators and students, each chapter explores a vital aspect of relational teaching—from emotional intelligence to vulnerability, from curiosity to reflection.

And in every chapter, a poem kindles the soul of the message—offering a moment of stillness, insight, or invitation.

More than a book, Human-Shaped Learning is a companion for educators who long to teach with their whole selves and nurture the whole selves of their students. It is for those who know that the most meaningful learning doesn’t come from control, but from connection.

Slow down. Lean in. This is what it means to shape learning with—and for—humans.

• Get the Human Shaped Learning Circle Gathering Starters Playlist Here
• Download theHuman Shaped Schools Staff Development Guide Here
• Go to the Human Shaped Schools Staff Development Guide GPT Here

Purchase “Use For Kindling,” the accompanying collection of ALL the “kindling” poems HERE

For more than a decade, across the Central region of the US, and beyond, the Compass Culture, Climate and Courage Team has been engaged in the work of bridge-building. We’ve helped groups build bridges across cultural divides like race and ethnicity; we’ve supported bridge-building across historical divides that were constructed decades ago, maintained due to a lack of awareness, and then ignored out of fear of making them worse. Our work has helped communities build bridges that span opportunity and economic divides, gender divides, educational, political, even religious divides. 

These bridges are built through stories shared in ways that develop trust. 

We bring individuals and communities together to tell their stories, the big stories of their cultures, traditions and shared experiences, and the small stories of their loves, challenges and losses. Through all of this, Circles of Trust© have been formed, differences have been navigated, and traumas have begun the healing process. This is the work of CircleBridge, a framework for transforming relationships and systems within organizations or communities. Sure, much of our work has happened within education, but we’ve also brought the CircleBridge approach to gatherings as diverse as communities of faith, prison inmates, and family groups.

Beginning with the telling of stories, we move through the challenges of listening deeply, turning to wonder concerning our differences, and choosing to show up fully to the circle while ensuring the circle stays open and welcoming to every other human being gathered there.

Through this process, organizations identify their guiding principles, their own Touchstones to come back to again and again and identify the voices that have gained the experience and gravitas to be considered the wise voices of their elders.

Transforming schools, businesses or non-profits doesn’t have to begin with a high-dollar consulting agency. It can begin simply by sitting down together and learning how to listen, share, grow in awareness of how our histories may still be coloring our future together in ways that hold us back from the transformation we know our organizations need.

CircleBridge is not one thing. CircleBridge is not a way of getting a set of helpful outside ideas. CircleBridge is a way of uncovering and enacting the intuitive and human ideas your organization or community already has: the ones that simply need a safe and courageous circle in order to surface.

Each of Compass’ Culture, Climate & Courage projects, websites, documentaries, trainings, workshops, or presentations grows out of the CircleBridge framework. When you come to us with your organization’s particular challenge, we will turn to this guiding framework of long-tested and successful processes to determine a direction and propose our plan for facilitating, supporting and assisting your transformative journey. Those who have come to us over the last decade of our work, haven’t always known exactly what they wanted or needed, but have brought with them the request to meet a broad range of challenges. They’ve asked for our help with things like:

• Developing Culturally Responsive Practices in school or work settings
• Implementing Indigenous Education initiatives or requirements
• Addressing school Climate and Culture challenges
• Better practice of Social Emotional Learning
• Develping greatyer Relational Trust among adults in their school, business or workplace
• Facilitation of challenging conversations
• Gaining awareness of Equity and Justice issues, and ways of addressing them
• Coaching and Modeling of classroom implementation of Responsive Practices
• Mentoring and leadership training
• Intercultural Agility to help individuals gain tools for navigating difference
• Retreat Design and Facilitation
• Video Storytelling to identify key themes or guiding principles
• Development of documentary films
• Development of video resource websites
• Navigating school or organizational change/restructuring

Our Learning Specialists are all prepared in at least two key bodies of researched practice that are foundational to the CircleBridge framework:

• Center for Courage & Renewal Facilitation (2-year preparation)
• Intercultural Development Inventory (administration and debrief conferencing)

Additionally, each of us brings a body of unique knowledge and experience, as well as enthusiasm to any challenge you bring us.

We look forward to beginning a journey with you!

WoLakota Project – Our South Dakota site dedicated to Indigenous Elder interviews and essential understandings

Teachings of our Elders – Our North Dakota site dedicated to Indigenous Elder interviews and essentail understandings

Green Siblings Project – Our National Parks-funding site featuring a documentary film and Social Justice workshop featuring interviews with Treopia, Ernest and Scott Green concerning life in the Jim Crow South and the 1957 Desegregation of Central High School ihn Little Rock, AR

Blue Deer Learning – Our video story-telling project with Texas A@M International University’s College of Education Teacher Preparation Pathway