Published: January 2023
Key Takeaways
- Building strong connections with legislators is essential for effective advocacy. Being a voting constituent with connections to other voters amplifies your impact, allowing you to shape decisions that impact your community.
- You don't need to be a policy expert to advocate successfully. Sharing personal stories highlighting the real-world impact of funding and education policies on students, classrooms, and schools is a compelling way to engage legislators. By humanizing the issues, you help lawmakers understand the practical implications of their decisions on public education.
- Being respectful, positive, and honest are crucial principles in advocacy. Focusing on students, avoiding party politics, and finding common ground on broader education values help bridge gaps and maintain bipartisan support for public education.
Advocate for your Students and Profession with Confidence to Amplify your Impact
Lobbying thrives on relationships. The closer you are to a legislator, the more they value and respect your input. As a citizen lobbyist, your power lies in being a voting constituent with connections to other voters. Cultivate these relationships to enhance your influence and actively shape decisions impacting your community.
- Share your story. You don’t have to be a policy expert to share powerful, personal examples of how funding and education policy affects your students, classroom and school. Most legislators are not educators, so sharing what happens daily in your classroom helps them relate abstract policy to real-world impact on students and educators.
- Keep it student-focused. Students are at the heart of everything we do as educators. All education policy and funding decisions are necessary because they ultimately affect students. Help legislators understand the impact of their decisions on your students.
- Be respectful. Be punctual, friendly and polite. Thank the legislator for their service and for taking the time to meet with you. Be prepared to speak and listen. Allow the legislator a chance to respond, listen carefully to their opinion and don’t interrupt. Give them an opportunity to voice their concerns and ask questions.
- Be positive. Make your case without being critical of another’s motives. Never criticize another legislator, lobbyist, or group. If you find yourself in a disagreement with your legislator, don’t get into an argument. Your responsibility is to present your case, not necessarily win your case.
- Be honest. Be credible, honest and trustworthy. If you don’t have the answer, simply state that and say you can get back to them. This gives you the opportunity to find the information and have another conversation at a later date.
- Don’t be intimidated. As a professional educator, you know more about public education than most legislators. And you certainly know more about your students, classroom and school. Don’t feel that you need to talk about the minute details of specific legislation. Talk about your experiences as an educator.
- Find common ground. Even if a legislator doesn’t support the specific position you are advocating, work to find common ground on broader public education values and issues.
- Avoid party politics. Public education is a bi-partisan issue.
- Maintain a positive relationship. Write thank you notes after a meeting and for necessary votes that support public education. Legislators will appreciate knowing their hard work is noticed.
