Get to Know the Xperiential Educator Advisors: Erin Whalen

I am from Los Angeles, California, and currently serve as Assistant Superintendent of Student Services at Da Vinci Schools. I was born into a proud Black, Chicano, and Indigenous family and raised in LA. My pathway to education began through Teach For America, when I taught in Miami, Florida.

After four successful years there (including a Teacher of the Year nomination), I moved back to LA and joined KIPP: Sol in East Los Angeles. Over time, I helped co-found Da Vinci RISE High School, serving as assistant principal, principal, and executive director before assuming my current district leadership role. 

My commitment to supporting students facing complex life challenges has always driven my approach: I believe deeply in designing schooling environments that offer flexibility, wraparound support, and dignity for youth navigating housing instability, foster care, and systems involvement. 

While my official roles have not always centered exclusively on animation or game design, my leadership in design thinking, project-based learning, and integrating student voice naturally intersect with creative and media-rich pathways. Over time, I have gravitated to incorporating storytelling, digital media, and project design into curriculum and enrichment, seeing them as powerful tools for student expression and connection.

How I first learned about Story Xperiential

I first encountered Story Xperiential through my relationship with XQ: The Super School Project and Xperiential's (previously X in a Box which was partnered with Pixar Animation Studios at the time) experiential learning networks, noticing how its emphasis on storytelling, creative agency, and media design aligned with the values we were building at Da Vinci.

What convinced me to use Story Xperiential in My Classes/Schools

• The alignment of storytelling with empathy, voice, and student agency felt very powerful. In a world saturated with digital media, giving students ways to author narrative, visually, interactively, and reflectively, is meaningful.

• The experiential and iterative design approach resonated: students don’t just consume stories or media; they build, revise, respond, and reflect.

• The ability to partner with a platform that has legitimacy (with ties to Pixar and media makers) gives authenticity to student work and bridges classroom practice with real-world creative contexts. The fact that the team at Xperiential is open to trauma-informed adaptation and collaboration provided confidence that the materials would be usable and responsive in our diverse settings.

Erin Whalen in action

Why I decided to become an Educator Advisor

• To help co-design and iterate the program so it better serves students across diverse contexts (especially those navigating trauma, instability, or systemic marginalization).

• To bridge vision and practice, bringing feedback from our unique student population into the development cycle of Xperiential.

• To ensure fidelity and relevance: as an advisor, I can help guard against shallow use and push for deep, meaningful implementation.

What I enjoy most about being an Educator Advisor

I enjoy providing practical feedback, grounded in real classroom challenges, ensuring that the program doesn’t just look good but functions well for teachers and students. There's also a sense of shared ownership knowing that the program continues to evolve with input from those who use it, including me.

A standout moment as an Educator Using Story Xperiential

One moment that stands out is when a student who had previously been reticent about expressing themselves emotionally used a Story Xperiential module to craft a personal narrative.

What began as a simple character sketch became a deeply symbolic media piece about resilience and identity. Peers and teachers responded with genuine curiosity, and the student asked to present it in a broader forum. That shift, from quiet participant to proudly showing their story, felt emblematic of the potential of creative media to unlock new voice and connection.