Influence Change Through Lobby Day
by Dan Greenberg, Sylvania Education Association
Most mornings, after about three or four slaps at the snooze bar, I get up around 6:15. One school day this past March, though, I was up, out the door and in the parking lot of my district central office by that time. On that frosty morning, I met up with seven other bleary-eyed individuals for a trip to Columbus for OEA’s Lobby Day.
It was a diverse group that included two other teachers, a retired teacher, a parent, our Assistant Superintendent and Treasurer, as well as a Sylvania School Board Member. Not only was the group full of people with diverse ties to public education, they also had diverse political views.
We had a long day. It’s a 300-mile trip to Columbus and back, which meant five hours on the road. When we weren’t on the road, we were in meetings, starting with a briefing at the OEA office, followed by meetings with Representative Teresa Fedor, Senator Randy Gardner and an aide from Representative Barbara Sears’ office. Throw in a break for lunch, and we ended up with a ten-hour day that left me ready for a nap.
Following our trip to Columbus, lawmakers didn’t immediately take action to change the amount of time spent on testing or the amount of money our school district received. Charter school accountability didn’t improve either. The next day, I went back to my classroom and legislators went back to their meetings and responsibilities as scheduled.
To the untrained eye, it may seem that we didn’t accomplish much by participating in OEA Lobby Day.
That’s flat-out wrong.
My group’s participation in Lobby Day, along with the efforts of groups from other districts who attended Lobby Days this year, will have an impact. While our efforts won’t solve all the public education problems, and while changes won’t happen immediately, the results of our efforts have been, and will continue to be recognizable.
I know this from experience. Two years ago, I brought a similar group to Lobby Day. At that time, we were dealing with OTES issues, the Third Grade Reading Guarantee and switching from state minimum school days to minimum school hours. OEA staff suggested many things we could bring up in conversations with legislators. Among them was urging legislators, if they changed our laws from minimum days to hours, to keep the wording requiring a five-day school week. There was concern that districts, in an effort to cut costs, would implement four-day weeks, with longer days that would diminish the integrity and effectiveness of schools. We went to our meetings that day and brought up that point, and the five-day language remains in law.
True, we didn’t solve every problem. We still have OTES and the Third Grade Reading Guarantee, but I truly believe we made a positive difference.
The verdict is still out, from a legislative standpoint, on the impact of this year’s Lobby Day, as debate continues about the best solution to the testing crisis and school funding. But no matter what the outcome may be on those issues, I have already seen the impact of our trip.
The positive impact comes not only through legislative items, but also through the process. Our trip engaged a diverse group for a common cause. Teachers were able to share their insights with those who are not in the classrooms every day. At lunch, my colleague, Heather, told our school board member, Stephen, about proctoring the first round of state tests. She relayed her concern about the validity of the tests, as she explained that, not only was each test different in the questions posed to students, but that some students had five test questions, some had six and some had seven. Stephen was shocked. He said something like “Are you kidding me?” and went on to talk about his own misgivings about the state tests. Later that afternoon, I heard him relay that story to someone else in a phone conversation.
Any time teachers are able to share their stories and convey the absurdity of our mandated testing system to non-educators, especially school board members, is significant.
It didn’t end there. Spending five hours in a car with Stephen, as well as my Assistant Superintendent and Treasurer, allowed me to build relationships with them. I know more about them, their interests and their families. This makes it easier to talk to them about school-related issues in the future. In fact, I called Stephen last week, and invited him to be part of a meeting this week with one of Senator Portman’s aides, to talk about high-stakes testing policies at the Federal level.
Not only did Stephen accept the invitation, he asked me if I could get him some information on the topic from OEA.
I encourage all locals to participate in Lobby Day. Bring a few teachers and some other education stakeholders along too. Even though you won’t fix all the ills of education in one day, your participation will definitely yield positive results.
Big Walnut teacher focuses on building relationships to improve student achievement
by James Sturtevant, Big Walnut Education Association
Teachers are often lectured, “Get to know your students, but that’s not easy to do. A lot of kids can be pretty closed down, and, if you try to get to know them before they’re ready, it can be counterproductive.
Bonding with students is fundamental to the learning process. John Hattie, in his landmark book Visible Learning, created a list of 138 influences on student learning. He placed student-teacher relationships in 11th place, far ahead of many things one might think more important. State departments of education, including Ohio’s, are requiring resident educators to demonstrate that positive relationships are being fostered in classrooms.
Invite students to come to you
If you’ve been tasked with bonding with students, and you’re a bit stumped on how to do it, try reverse engineering the problem. Instead of you coming on too strong, encourage students to come to you. In order to coax students out of their shells, melt arctic exteriors, or win over the disruptive, teachers need to be:
- Approachable
- Interesting
- Safe
- Non-threatening
How about sharing these experiences with your class?
- A movie review
- A restaurant review
- Detail a particularly challenging workout
- Map out a new home construction project
- Have your students help you select new eyeglass frames
- Or a new car
- Or maybe display a before and after picture of
your next haircut
Tell your own stories
A great way to bond with students is to tell stories about yourself. That’s right—this means teachers may have to come out of their shells too. Strive to become an adult that kids find interesting. Bring students into your world. Not literally. I’m not proposing you invite them to your house for dinner, but allow them to live vicariously through some of your experiences. You’ll be amazed at the power of this simple tactic. Allow students to get to know you. Isn’t that the way you’ve forged other relationships?
To give your stories more power, accompany narratives with images projected on your SMART Board®. Become a photojournalist. If something interesting happens to you, capture images on your phone and share them in class.
Invariably, when I spout my ideas about sharing personal stories, I get some push back. Here are some common reservations:
- What a tremendous waste of instructional time!
- Teachers need to be respected…they’re not
entertainers! - My students would look at me like I’m an idiot!
Certainly, spending a few minutes at the beginning or end of class bonding with kids isn’t a waste. Particularly if you believe, like John Hattie, that relationships are essential to the learning process. You might find improved student-teacher rapport magically leads to
better student performance. I would never want to undermine any educator’s image. Sharing information with students shouldn’t lead to this. You don’t have to be a court jester, stand-up comedian or an extrovert for that matter. The stories and experiences you share don’t have to be humorous. Just because most student skits turn into comedies, doesn’t mean your show and tell sessions must be the same.
Foster student sharing
For those concerned with student receptiveness, I totally understand. Students can be tricky. When you first go down this sharing path, some kids may be dismissive or hostile, “What’s this gotta do with what we’re studying?” Or, “Why are you telling us this stuff?” One crabby student does not constitute a consensus. The majority of your class might really enjoy your rendition of your experience, but be too reserved to express it.
And, I’ve often found, kids who are initially the most persnickety, later tend to be the first to start sharing back…“Mr. Sturtevant, guess where my family ate last night!” Or, “Mr. Sturtevant, wait till I tell you what coach made us do at the end of practice!” So, if you experience some initial resistance, keep trying. Your students will come around.
And finally, these reservations fail to appreciate—and this is MOST important—that contemporary youth are totally comfortable sharing and hearing trivial details of daily existence. Think about what students post on social media:
- Massive photo albums of themselves
- Their favorite teams, food, music, movies, shows, games and apps
Young people are totally down with this form of sharing. They’re constantly informing all of humanity…what’s up. This ultra-connected, online, social networking generation diligently refreshes the stream of information.
Short Tempers and Hard Tests
By Julie Rine, Minerva Local Education Association
It’s that time of year when teachers face two struggles: keeping our tempers, and writing final exams.
Even the best teachers feel stress when the fast-approaching end of the year means getting those final exams ready while trying to finish the units left on the agenda. Meanwhile, kids are gone for field trips, early family vacations, and college visits, so keeping everyone caught up is half the battle. And all this means that what has driven us crazy all year threatens to drain even the kindest teacher’s supply of patience. For me, it’s things like hearing “Do you have a pencil I can borrow?” (because why would one bring a pencil to English class, right?), and of course, the inevitable “Will this be on the exam?”.
Creating final exams is a tricky business. It causes both veteran teachers who have taught thousands of students and the novices to the profession who are finishing their first year to sit down (or collapse, as the case may be) and wonder what their students have learned this year. What did they truly and deeply learn? I’ll admit, some days, I might even ask did they learn anything? This is my own final exam. How did I do in teaching those ever-distracted teenagers, many of whom find nothing relevant to their lives in my class, despite my use of music and YouTube and Chrome Books and Prezis and Power Points and prayers (I didn’t teach them the prayers; those were strictly mine).
The craziness of the end of the year and writing exams leads to a much shorter temper for me. Each April I promise myself I will keep my patience no matter what, and every year I fail. Occasionally my frustration erupts. “Are you kidding me? You didn’t bring paper or a pencil to English class? Seriously?” And every year, as I work on writing my final exams, I wonder if my kids have learned enough American Literature and if I have done enough to prepare them for college writing and passing the ACT.
But this year is a bit different. On a November morning last fall, a car accident took the lives of three of my students. No one was drinking, no one was texting while driving, no one was driving too fast; the roads just turned from wet to ice in no time and their car collided with a school bus. A’liyia, who was a junior in my class two years ago, was a freshman at WVU, loving her first year of college and being the student manager of the women’s basketball team. Storm was a senior athlete who had just finished football season and was getting ready for basketball season. Savannah was a beautiful girl in my 3rd period class this year. Like many kids, she was quieter in class than she was with her friends. I was just beginning to get to know her.
I will never forget getting the news, attending the vigil, or the near silence as kids changed classes the Monday after the accident. So many images are seared into my memory: the looks on their faces, pleading with me to make sense of this for them and my inability to do so; the many hugs and tears our staff and student body shared in those first days; the entire town, it seemed, forming a line around the halls of our school for the calling hours; the gym, normally filled with spectators cheering at a sporting event instead filled with mourners of all ages.
When I reflect back on what my students learned this year, I know they learned more than just English. They learned how to survive a loss so devastating, moving forward seems impossible. They learned that their teachers are vulnerable, and that in some situations, we do not have the answers. They learned that the friends they have known since kindergarten might not walk across the stage at graduation with them. Those are the lessons you can’t put on a final exam.
And when I think about my year, I know that this year more than any other, it was about so much more than the common core and the ACT test. I always knew I loved my students, and I had often said I didn’t know what I would do if I lost any of them. Now I know. I cried for days and found myself remembering all the little moments I had had with each of them that seem so much more meaningful now. I hugged more kids this year than in all my previous years combined, and I cried right along with them when the hand of grief, without warning, reached out and choked us. And, on these final days of the year when the stress gets high and my temper gets short, I have learned to be grateful that an absent student is merely gone for a day or two. I have learned to think before speaking; what I would want my last words to any of my students to be? They would not be something sarcastic about bringing a pencil to class.
I learned that the PARCC and final exams will not be the biggest tests anyone in my school faces this year.
The test we face will not end when the school year ends; it will continue on as our town strives to support each other and the families of A’liyia, Storm, and Savannah, while never forgetting the lessons losing them taught us.
Why You Need to Represent at the OEA Representative Assembly
by Dan Greenberg, Sylvania Education Association
It’s a hectic time of year: prom season, standardized testing, field trips, and yard work keep teachers hopping from one activity to the next, as we wind down our school year.
With our schedules so full, it’s hard to imagine fitting one more thing onto our calendar.
For me, though, there’s one thing I’ve got on my list of “must dos,” along with the things happening in my school district and my house; attending the Spring OEA Representative Assembly.
If you’ve never attended an OEA Representative Assembly, you may wonder how that could make the must do list, alongside all the other things going on. How could a trip to Columbus and a couple days of meetings rank above mulching, mowing and the mound of papers to grade?
The thing is, the Representative Assembly is far more than “a couple of days of meetings.” It’s hearing from our OEA leadership about the state of our organization and how we’re going to meet the challenges that we’ll be facing. It’s connecting with other educators from across the state. It’s proposing and voting on New Business Items that help determine the direction of our organization, where every delegate has the opportunity to share his/her thoughts and cast a vote.
There’s some pretty significant and serious business that happens at the RA, and it has an impact on all members of OEA.
At this upcoming Representative Assembly, we’ll be voting about the RA itself; whether we should continue to have two RAs every year, or if there should be the option to have only one RA in a year.
Who knows what else might come up for a vote? What if there’s a vote about high stakes testing and how OEA should advocate for students and teachers? What if there’s a vote relating to a controversial subject like Common Core or opt out?
I want a voice. I want a vote. I want to represent my colleagues back home. The only way I can do that is by being a delegate at the RA.
Becoming a delegate isn’t hard. There’s no secret handshake or password. There’s no test over Robert’s Rules of Order or the OEA Constitution and Bylaws. All you have to do is let your local President or another officer know you’re interested, and when your association holds its delegate election in the Fall, you can get your name on the ballot.
That’s how I got involved 14 years ago, and I’ve been coming to Representative Assemblies every year since then.
I’ve never regretted making the trip to Columbus, even when it’s meant waiting a week to spread mulch.
I hope you’ll consider coming down to the RA this weekend too. If you’re not a delegate this year, make plans to be one next year. The OEA is your organization, so make your voice heard!
High-Stakes Standardized Testing: A View from the Elementary School Office
by Jenny Russell, Reynoldsburg Support Staff Association
It starts at the very beginning of the day. At arrival, some kids trudge in, others are jittery and anxious. All students start the day in the gymnasium for the school’s daily morning assembly. As the school secretary, I stay in the office, but I can hear the teachers and staff give a pep talk – “You’re going to do great! You’re going to rock the test!”
But even before the test begins in the morning, I see students in the clinic. “I threw up in the bathroom.” “My stomach hurts.” When I’m wearing my nurse hat, I usually ask, “When did this start?” “When I woke up.” “Did you tell an adult at home? What did they say?” “They said the test is important and I have to go to school.” Lots of parents feel it, too.
Today’s test, or section of a test (most tests have multiple sections and are given over multiple days), starts and ends at a specific time. But in the office, I don’t know if one class starts ten minutes late because they’ve decided to give kids one more chance to use the bathroom, or because they’re waiting for Sally, who is a half-hour tardy almost every day, to show up at school. This means I don’t know exactly when the test ends.
For a half hour, an hour and fifteen minutes, or two and a half hours, there needs to be silence. Often the principal and school psychologist are both administering tests and cannot be disturbed. I send out an e-mail plea for teachers to keep students in their classrooms and not send them down to the office for behavior problems. This is also important because the other rooms in the office suite are also being used for testing – students who receive special accommodations test in these spaces, so the office needs to be quiet during the test, too.
If students arrive at school late, after the test begins (and we almost always get at least one late arrival), they need to stay in the office until the test is finished. Usually they have a book and can keep themselves occupied. Sometimes a parent angrily demands, “Why does she have to sit in the office?” (despite paper schedules, e-mail messages, and even automated phone calls to families the night before, pleading with them to help their children get a good night’s sleep and arrive at school on time because today is a testing day). Occasionally a parent will take their child with them and leave in a huff. But usually, the student(s) and I wait for the all-clear, to let us know that testing is over and they can rejoin their classes.
After the test is over, I get more clinic visits. Sometimes the kids know they’re truly sick and have just come to school to take the test. This always makes me a little proud and a little sad. Sometimes they tell me that their head started hurting or their stomach started twisting just before or during the test. Sometimes they are not really feeling bad, they’re just looking for a little extra TLC on a stressful day. These usually aren’t my “frequent flyers,” students who I see in the clinic a lot. They’re just regular kids who are stressed out by standardized test after standardized test.
Kids also talk to me about the tests. Luckily, at the elementary level I haven’t gotten any deep questions about why they have to take the tests, although I know they touch on this in their classrooms. They tell me things like, “I’m scared. What if I fail the [OAA reading] test and can’t go to 4th grade?” Or “I’m sick of taking tests.”
They don’t know that these are high-stakes tests. They don’t realize that if many of them do poorly on one or more of the tests, in our district at least, their teachers may be offered probationary contracts instead of standard contracts. They don’t understand that low performance on these tests may lead to a reduction in funding for the entire school.
And I’m glad. Because the ways things stand today, these tests make our students anxious enough.
What to do about too much testing — Fight, Flee, or Fake It?
By Julie Rine, Minerva Local Education Association
For almost twenty years, I have prepared students in my classes for the Proficiency Test, the OGT, the ACT, and now the PARCC and my own SLOs. Never before this year have I felt that the testing took over my classroom.
Add up the amount of time spent taking the tests, throw in the time spent taking practice tests, and the amount is already eleven class periods, and we haven’t taken the EOY PARCC yet. Toss in the periods we trekked down to the computer lab and the time we spent trying to log in to practice tests and get the technology to work right, and that adds another three wasted days.
And let’s not forget that while I was administering the PARCC to my freshmen, my other classes of juniors had a sub. But the juniors got the joy of taking two pre-assessment and two post-assessment SLOs, which took a total of four periods, so they got to bask in the excitement of testing, too.
And sometimes, just for old times’ sake, I will give my students a test to assess their understanding of a unit over say, Romeo and Juliet or transcendentalism.
The testing is ridiculous. Every teacher knows it, and now with the many issues with the PARCC and AIR tests, parents, too, are realizing that required testing has gotten out of control.
As a teacher, it seems to me we have a few options about how to approach these tests. Some teachers have taken a stand and left the profession, choosing to “flee”, protesting the craziness that education in America has become and refusing to work in a system that subjects our children to the whims of politicians, most of whom have no teaching experience of their own.
Part of me wishes I could do this, but I, like many others in the profession, have invested too much time and money to leave now. And truly, I do still like the kids and the content, but if that ever changed, I would have to seriously consider a Plan B.
Some teachers have chosen to “fight” back, by writing letters to legislators, participating in Lobby Days, and talking to anyone who will listen about how the “game” has changed with the requirement of all the tests, and of course, education should never be considered any kind of a game.
And, some choose to “fake” it, to tell their students that these tests are good for them, that they will help us know what to teach better, that we will get all kinds of really meaningful data that will help improve our teaching. They choose to smile and make the best of the situation and try to hide the fact that this is not what they signed up for when they decided to go into teaching.
I can’t fault anyone for taking any of these approaches. We all deal with adversity in life in different ways. Frankly, at this point we all have to choose whatever path works to keep our sanity. Teaching high school students, and being a generally outspoken and passionate advocate for issues I believe strongly in, I am choosing to fight.
I’m also choosing not to fake it with my kids. I have been brutally honest with my students, telling them exactly how I feel about the barrage of tests now required, and why I think they are unnecessary and take too much time away from actually engaging with each other in discussions about literature and writing and current events … you know, from actually LEARNING.
But, I have also told them that we must jump through this hoop. And we must do our best on the tests, on my part preparing them for the tests, and on their part taking them seriously and persevering even when they seem too hard or too frustrating or too pointless. Because in life and certainly in any job, there are times when you have to do things you don’t want to do.
If you’re lucky, when you encounter those unpleasant tasks, you might find yourself with a little bit of power to advocate for a change. And when the requirements come from politicians, we do have the right to voice our opinions. Part of being an educated person is knowing how to fight back in responsible and respectful ways, such as writing letters to or calling legislators, educating others on Facebook about the issues, and lobbying at the capitol.
Frankly, I don’t care what my students get on the PARCC if they leave my class understanding these much more important life skills. So I don’t fake it with my students and disguise my dissatisfaction with my happy teacher face, and I don’t flee the profession. Instead, I am trying to turn even this, perhaps the greatest obstacle to true teaching I have encountered in nearly twenty years, into a lesson.
That’s the kind of education that cannot be measured by a standardized test.
Standing up by speaking out
We need more time for teaching, not testing, we’re telling legislators and leaders. And they’re listening.
By Becky Higgins, OEA President
As educators, we know our students might forget the names of the presidents who hailed from Ohio or how to solve an equation. But the lesson we hope they never forget is the love of learning.
What matters most — the joy of discovery, a sense of curiosity, creativity and imagination — will never appear on a bubble test. But it comes to life when a student reads a book, performs music, creates an experiment, or writes a story.
As educators, we support testing as a way to guide student instruction and adapt lessons to a student’s individual needs. But when our students spend more and more class time preparing for and taking state and federally mandated tests, we know something is wrong.
The current system of standardized tests doesn’t provide teachers or students with the feedback or accountability needed to promote student learning and success. And it fails to address problems like ensuring equity and opportunity for all students in our public schools.
High school students in Pickerington now participate in testing on 102 out of the 178 days they are in attendance. Teacher Erin Salzer’s freshmen will miss a minimum of 48 hours of instruction time in order to take assessments. She notes that, in comparison, students who have earned a law degree in Ohio, spend three days taking the bar exam in order to practice law.
Her students are not unique. In classrooms throughout Ohio — and across the nation — students are spending increasingly more time being tested and less time learning.
As we started the school year, I urged members to stand up for all of Ohio’s students by asking questions, sharing ideas, speaking up, challenging assumptions and taking action.
We’re doing just that.
We are challenging the consequences of over testing, misguided support for failing for-profit charter schools, and inadequate school funding. And those who have the power to make change are listening to our concerns.
A group of 12 OEA members from across Ohio recently met with Superintendent of Public Instruction Dr. Richard Ross to share the classroom experiences on the impact of excessive testing on student learning.
The educators told him that the over use and misuse of testing is a problem that has taken away from quality learning and teaching time. And, they said, teachers spend more time ‘teaching to the test’ than addressing the needs of their students.
We know, however, that reducing the number of tests being given to our students is an issue that must be resolved not only at the local and state level but also at the federal level.
As Congress considers the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), members of the House and Senate must recognize that less mandated testing frees up time and resources, creates less pressure to ‘teach to the test,’ and allows educators to focus on instilling a love of learning in students.
With this in mind, Salzer and 13 other concerned OEA members recently joined U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown for a roundtable discussion about the reauthorization of ESEA and the overuse of testing in schools.
Anne Bowles, a teacher in Wooster, told Senator Brown that parents do not send their children to Ohio’s public schools—and teachers do not join the profession—to lose valuable learning time to test prep and over testing and so that data from testing can be used for purposes never intended.
For Adrienne Bowden meeting with Senator Brown was an important step in informing legislators about what the testing environment looks like at the classroom level. Ultimately, she says, the “goal is to improve the quality of education we provide our students.”
Bowles says the opportunity to discuss challenges faced by Ohio’s education professionals and needed changes to ESEA’s pending reauthorization was greatly appreciated and a step in the right direction to ensure that public educator voices are heard at the federal level.
The conversations we have with parents, administrators, community leaders and legislators about education policies and their impact are important. We are now on a path to working with legislators and other leaders toward change that will ease the burden of over testing for our students and our schools. And this is just the beginning.
Each time we speak, we foster an understanding that ensuring success for our students requires the support of everyone. Each time we speak, we create another opportunity to work together to advocate for — and champion — all of Ohio’s students.
We know that all students have the ability to achieve, and we strive to help them succeed each day. I’m proud of what are doing to create the kind of education our students need and deserve and I hope you are too.
Why Lobby? Ten Reasons to Lobby for Your Cause
1. You can make a difference. In Toledo, Ohio, a single mother struggling to raise her son without the help of a workable child support system put an ad in a local newspaper to see if there were others who wanted to work for change. There were. Over time, they built the Association for Child Support Enforcement, which has helped change child support laws across the country.
2. People working together can make a difference. Mothers Against Drunk Driving convinced dozens of states to toughen their drunk driving laws. As a result, the numbers of drunk driving deaths are lower nationwide.
3. People can change laws. History is full of people and groups that fought against great odds to make great changes: child labor laws, public schools, clean air and water laws, social security. These changes were not easy to achieve. They all took the active involvement – the lobbying – of thousands of people who felt something needed to be changed.
4. Lobbying is a democratic tradition. The act of telling our policymakers how to write and change our laws is at the very heart of our democratic system. It is an alternative to what has occurred in many other countries: tyranny or revolution. Lobbying has helped keep America’s democracy evolving over more than two centuries.
5. Lobbying helps find real solutions. People thinking creatively and asking their elected officials for support can generate innovative solutions that overcome the root causes of a problem. Through such work, abused children have found rapid placement in safe homes, and restaurants have been able to donate excess food to those in need.
6. Lobbying is easy. Lobbying is not some mysterious rite that takes years to master. You can learn how to lobby – whom to call, when to call, and what to say – in minutes. There are a few simple reporting rules that your nonprofit organization needs to follow, but they aren’t complicated.
7. Policy makers need your expertise. Few institutions are closer to the real problems of people than nonprofits and community groups. Every professional lobbyist will tell you that personal stories are powerful tools for change. People and policymakers can learn from your story.
8. Lobbying helps people. Everything that goes into a lobbying campaign – the research, the strategy planning, the phone calls and visits – will help fulfill your goal whether it be finding a cure for cancer, beautifying the local park, or some other cause that helps people.
9. The views of local nonprofits are important. Because local governments often decide how to spend federal and state money, local nonprofits have even more responsibility to tell local policymakers what is needed and what will work. Your lobbying can have an immediate, concrete impact on people in need.
10. Lobbying advances your cause and builds public trust. Building public trust is essential to nonprofit organizations and lobbying helps you to gain it by increasing your organization’s visibility. Just as raising funds and recruiting volunteers are important to achieving your organization’s mission, so is lobbying.
Adapted from “Ten Reasons to Lobby for Your Cause” from Center for Lobbying in the Public Interest at www.clpi.org
If you build it, they will come
By Dan Greenberg, Sylvania Education Association
“If you build it, he will come,” whispered a mysterious voice in one of my favorite movies, “Field of Dreams.” By the end of the movie, a corn field in the middle of Iowa was transformed into a magical baseball diamond, where a father and son were reunited, and their relationship was mended through a game of catch.
I have no plans to build a baseball field anywhere in Northwest Ohio. However I, along with fellow education advocates in the area, did construct something last week that was like our field of dreams. We set up a screening of the documentary “Rise Above the Mark,” set in Indiana, which chronicles the problems we’re dealing with in public education; over-testing, underfunding and unaccountable charter schools.
We created handouts, telling people how they could get involved. We promoted the event through social media and by working with other local organizations. We set up a panel consisting of two locally elected school board members and an education expert.
We built it, and they came.
They, parents, teachers and community members, came despite frigid temperatures. They came from Toledo, and Sylvania and at least five other school districts in Northwest Ohio. Close to 100 people came to engage in an evening focused on public education.
The audience of close to 100 saw a powerful movie. Some of my friends cried, watching a teacher explain that she’s retiring because the joy of teaching is gone, then later, seeing a father choke up as he tells how important his son’s principal was in his child’s growth.
It was clear, by the attendees’ reactions following the hour-long film, that the documentary struck a chord with them.
Audience members posed questions about how to deal with over-testing, explaining that they didn’t want their kids subjected to hours and hours of PARCC-based questions, wondering if opting their children out of the tests was the best option. Teachers added testimonials to confirm the stories shared in the film. People left agitated, wanting to write to their state elected officials, wanting to know what they could do to help the cause and stand up for public education.
There is no definitive answer. There is no quick fix. However, there is hope, because people from different political backgrounds and different ties to public education came together last week; all of them realizing the importance of a strong public education system. School board members, one Democrat, one Republican, sat next to each other, conveying the same sentiments about the issues facing our schools; both supporting the efforts of educators.
From the success of last week’s event, I know that we must keep building “it;” programs, where all supporters of public education can get together and learn about the issues facing our schools. We must build people’s understanding about the harmful effects of testing by telling stories about children who cry during tests, or about our own children, who can’t sleep the night before a PARRC test, worrying what a sub-par score will mean for themselves and their teachers. We must build an engaged audience within our communities, talking in person or using social media.
If we build all these things, people will come, and they will stand with us, in support of public education.
Our miracle won’t be ghosts emerging from rows of corn. It will be quality public schools for all Ohio’s children.
Data Driven Education is destroying the minds of our kids.
As a teacher, I place a tremendous amount of trust in the wisdom of great people that have come before me. When I read the above quotes, I am inspired to teach my students to love learning. Education is not how much we “put in the bucket” or how much material we cover, but rather, how much we inspire the students to fill the bucket on their own. A dentist does very little to prevent cavities, but their advice is what inspires us to brush and floss in order to avoid them. Much like a teacher inspires a class to want to learn. My high school Spanish teacher taught me very little of the Spanish I currently speak today with my wife and family, but she planted the seed of excitement to want to learn Spanish. So how much Spanish did that one teacher actually teach me? Very little, but she taught me to be a lifelong learner and to have love for the Spanish language.
As a high school teacher, I have 6 classes that I only see 180 times for 49 minutes (minus the countless hours of class-time missed due to required state tests and test prep). This is not nearly enough time to “fill the bucket” with all the required information. What I need to do is inspire them to go outside of my classroom with a desire to continue learning. Unfortunately, this is nearly impossible to measure, so states have begun creating lists of “standards” that we follow to fill up the bucket. With as many as 150 kids and our career depending on it, it’s all I can do to just simply have the students memorize the list of state standards. However, what teachers should do is simply inspire the kids to love the content and the bucket will fill on its own.
With the demands the state puts on teachers to “prove teachers are filling the bucket” we are forced to teach students meaningless, easily testable, low-level information that they can regurgitate on the State tests. I know they are trying to create tests that “align with the common core” but in reality, this is yet another list of “things to teach.”
A successful student will pass a state test?
Or…
A successful student will transform into a lifelong learner that has a passion for learning and an ability to apply learned knowledge to novel situations.
We need to take a stand against toxic testing and what it is doing to the minds of our children. We see the effects in our classrooms daily. Students can no longer apply knowledge learned to novel situations. Students do not learn how to learn. Students do not retain learned information as we have trained them to memorize, regurgitate, and then make room for the next “standard”. How can our future governors, senators, CEOs, employees handle diverse situations that we haven’t specifically trained them to handle? Unfortunately, we have shifted our focus to programming our kids like robots to regurgitate useless information on a state mandated test, while at the same time, private companies are spending billions to program robots to think for themselves.
By Christopher Gibfried, Winton Woods Teachers’ Association Vice President