I love watching Olympic ice skating. The athlete makes the art of skating appear effortless, but only through thousands of practice and flawless execution. I find that this has many parallels to teaching. If an observer watches me work in my classroom, they will see me teach, correct, praise, admonish, and deliver the dreaded teacher stare, all in the space of 2-3 minutes. It’s taken me a long time to master these skills, but now that I’ve got them down I can make teaching appear easy to the untrained eye.
But while educators excel in the social skills required to interact effectively with students, we often fail miserably at interacting effectively with politicians. And we do so at our own peril. Like it or not who we teach, what we teach and the resources we receive to do so is dictated completely by politics and politicians. Quite simply, politicians determine everything that happens in our public education system.
Some teachers choose to ignore politics all together which I believe to be a big mistake. But even worse are those who go to the extreme in the other direction. Instead of ignoring politicians they deride and personally attack anyone who propose policies they don’t like. They accuse them of hating teachers, hating public education, or worse, hating children all together. This type of interaction damages not only teachers, but the entire public education system. Teachers have the most first hand experience with the policies put into play by our politicians. Therefore, we’re the most qualified to tell them what works and what doesn’t. But going about it in a negative and derisive fashion turns politicians off to our voices to the detriment of the public education system.
Just like an Olympic skater that fails to master an essential skill will never win gold, our failure to master political interactions ensures that our education system will never live up to its potential. To change our education system, we need to transform the way we collectively interact with politicians. Based on what I see in the news, blogs and comment boards, here are the four most important things we need to change.
First, we need to stop taking everything politicians do personally. The vast majority of politicians are normal people trying to do what they think is right. They’re NOT evil. We may disagree on the specifics of a policy, but an honest disagreement should not extend to hurtful personal attacks as they so often do. Imagine how we would feel if our students did this to us every time we changed a classroom policy! As long as we respond with hate and anger every time someone proposes a policy we disagree with, no politician in their right mind will ever want to hear what teachers have to say.
Second, we need to think carefully about not just what we say but how we say it. Just like in the classroom, being right doesn’t matter if we can’t express it in a way that compels action. The same is true with politicians. Too often we come off as demanding and condescending because we “know” we are right and they are wrong. And when we ARE right, we write and speak about politicians in such a dismissive and disrespectful way that it causes them to turn a deaf ear to anything constructive we might say. Our interactions should certainly contain our demands for change but they should also be framed in a constructive and respectful manner that encourages politicians to listen to us instead of run the other way when they see us coming.
Third, we need to seek to understand the world within which politicians function. Policies don’t change all at once. They change incrementally. It’s unrealistic to think that we can charge headlong into a politician’s office and demand that they make an immediate change to a policy we disagree with. Unreasonable demands paint us as disconnected and communicates that we don’t understand the way their world works or the way policy is made. And the result is that it becomes easier to dismiss us and our proposals for change.
Fourth, we need to do our homework. We need to learn the ins and outs of policy before we start challenging elected officials on specifics. Most importantly, we need to be able to back up our claims with facts. It’s easy to dismiss someone who makes hyperbolic statements. It’s much more difficult to dismiss someone who’s grounded in solid research. Think about it, teachers. Would you listen to a student who came to you claiming they deserved more points on their exam without any shred of proof as to what was improperly graded? I wouldn’t! We can do this by making sure we follow the latest in education policy research coming out of places like the American Enterprise Institute, Center for American Progress, Stanford University, the major teachers unions and the Gates Foundation.
Just like an ice skater cannot win a competition without mastering all essential skills, our profession will never reach its potential to transform public education until we master the crucial art of interacting with EVERYONE that has a hand in our classrooms. This includes politicians. It’s vital that we do so because so much of what we do is dictated by the choices they make. Only when we step back and change the way we interact with politics and politicians will we be empowered to have the impact we seek.
By Jon Alfuth
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Posted on February 26, 2014
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