Advocacy and Activism

Here at the League of Education Voters, we know more than our fair share of advocates.  Principals, parents, community members, teachers, preachers, business people and more unite to improve educational outcomes for students across Washington state. However, with all these valuable resources, student participation can easily be forgotten in the education advocacy equation.  LEV strives to keep students at the center of our efforts.

One of our summer interns, Grace Armstrong, who is studying Special Education at Gonzaga University, decided to tackle this issue head on. This summer she developed a workshop entitled “Advocacy and Activism at School.” Her goal is to give students the power to fix issues they see at school, rather than relying on an adult to help, which oftentimes never happens. With this workshop, students will identify a needed area for change at their school, uncover the root causes and long-term effects of the issue, and examine their personal investment in repairing the issue. Most importantly, they will develop a strategic action plan on how to influence people in power and conquer these school-related issues through advocacy and activism. This workshop is focused on forming student and community coalitions, so students can advocate not only for their needs, but the needs of many.

Grace has already presented the workshop at several local community centers and has more scheduled.  She says, “the students teeming energy, curiosity and passion blow me away. They have so much to discuss surrounding issues from bullying, to unhealthy school lunches, to falling behind in class. You can tell they want change and they want it now.” Grace can’t wait to continue this workshop series at more community centers and summer camp programs around Seattle. Contact her at grace@educationvoters.org if you would like to schedule a workshop!

This is the written testimony of Ari Kohn, the founder and president of the Post-Prison Education Program. Ari testified in favor of SSB 5244 to transform school discipline on February 12, 2013. 

Members of the Senate Ways &Means Committee:

I’m Ari Kohn; founder and president of the Post-Prison Education Program, a non-profit organization that works to dramatically reduce recidivism by harnessing the power of education and meeting the legitimate needs of former prisoners. The Post-Prison Education Program provides access to education and unwavering support through wrap-around services including tuition, housing, groceries, daycare and intensive mentoring.

For the seven years we’ve existed, our non-profit has worked only with adult prisoners who have the most difficult cases: serious mental illness, addiction, and long lists of felony convictions are some of the issues we address. Yet, our recidivism rate is less than two percent. Ninety-eight percent of the adults we serve successfully transition into productive lives, often pursuing and finishing college degrees in the process. They succeed because we invest.

On the other hand, today the Department of Corrections lists a 46% re-admission rate.  It’s almost comical; after talking in terms of “recidivism” since 1999 they have switched and now talk about “readmission.”  Regardless of which term you use, the fact is for every two people who walk out of a Washington State prison today you can bet that one of them is going back (46%).  The way we’ve overcome that statistic and found success is by investing in people.

We don’t care what it takes, we urge you to invest now, invest in these young kids today, because we know if you wait until adulthood to address the issues many prisoners struggle with, costs grow exponentially. Our program uses the small budget we have with maximum impact. We deliver the services and resources former prisoners need – including counseling, tutoring, tuition, daycare, books and software, in-patient care and basic life needs such as food and housing – because we know our investment will pay off in saved lives, reunited and strengthened families, generally with lives worth living.

The one thing we believe above all others in regard to these young kids is invest now – invest, invest, invest.  It will pay off (even in the short term).  I have noticed that people are taken aback by the costs associated with keeping more kids in school, but we have seen over and over again that the cost to implement a preventative infrastructure is nowhere near the tremendously high costs associated with helping adult prisoners attempt to successfully re-enter our communities.

In almost all cases we’ve found that if you invest in people they will respond positively and in a way that leads to saved families and safer communities.  In closing, I can only emphasize to you that kicking kids out of school at the drop of the hat, as is being done throughout the state, is as far a cry from investing in somebody as you can get.  If doing so is allowed to continue, we will all pay a very high price, and continue to see very sad results.

This post was written by Emma Margraf, a foster parent and advocate.

I am a busy mom. I’m not the only one, I get that. I have great admiration for the moms who stay on target and keep up with everything all the time, but I am certainly not one of them. Judgment is one of the things about parenthood that I was not prepared for, and I have a knee jerk argh reaction whenever I run across completely unnecessary expressions of the inability to see things from another person’s perspective. A busy person, who, maybe, flat forgot about the bake sale and the form required to get her into band. But that’s a different story. A few weeks ago (I’m behind on … my life … but we covered that) I read this story, and it’s been bugging me ever since.

I am so busy that I have become one of those people that mostly gets my news from what my friends posts on Facebook – and because I am who I am I clicked on this story after I’d seen it pop up a few times … and as the kids say, OMG.

Can’t we all just get along?

The story’s premise is that we, as parents, should take all of this on face value. These are instructions … but I am not in school. There are aspects of being a parent that require this conversation to be a conversation, not a test.

First of all: you all are leaving the profession in droves because you can’t stand the parents? Really? It’s my fault? That’s quite a burden — and one I would think I and other parents share with a thousand other factors, many of which are caused by people who could help and don’t – they just watch us fight with each other.

Trust us, you say. Approach a conversation about a concern by saying “I know kids exaggerate”, you say. If you are telling us something, it’s true, you say, so you just have to believe it and back it up. The problem here is that we’re with our kids for a lifetime – you have them for a year, or a couple of years, or an hour a day. If a teacher tells me something happened I am absolutely going to verify it, because Jane needs to know that I am in her corner. Every public school situation she’s been in has been big and crowded and full of opportunities for overworked teachers to miss things that are important — and there is no way that I am going to punish her for something without gathering as many facts as possible.

What few teachers will admit to me is this: teachers have favorite students. When I first got Jane she had a lot of habits that made her, um, not their favorite. I understood why, and I didn’t fault them for it. She was frustrating. This was painfully clear to me as I watched the 8th grade graduation ceremony and all the clearly popular kids got hugs and high fives from every teacher as they walked by with their diplomas, and the loners, the awkward children, the children that clearly struggled got semi-engaged handshakes or were left to just walk on by. Teachers who had Jane when she had behavior problems universally took the side of other children when Jane was in an altercation, even when there were no adult witnesses and clearly there was more to the story than was being told. She was frustrating, but not every problem was her fault.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There are a handful of teachers that I would walk miles barefoot in the snow for. Jane told me once that one of those teachers was mean, and I knew she’d gotten in trouble with him that day and I said, “No way, you’ll have to try harder than that—he’s the nicest teacher you’re likely to have for a great while, and you need to treat him with respect.”

Those moments don’t hold their weight if you do support teachers when it isn’t warranted. Jane had a terrible teacher last year that shortchanged her and didn’t think she was capable of much. I really couldn’t lie to her and say the teacher was worth respecting. She wasn’t. What I did say was that I’ve had bosses I didn’t like and who didn’t like me, and that didn’t change the fact that I needed to do everything on my job description — regardless of personality.

Teachers have hard jobs. I’ve seen that. I have a hard job too, in addition to being a foster parent. I am always struggling to stay ahead of the game, and in that struggle, I remind myself that her educational success and happiness is most important. I support every teacher who has supported Jane. I support every school that has listened to her. I support every situation that has asked her to be the best person and student she can be. Blind support helps no one, especially Jane.

In the decades I have to spend with Jane, I’d like her to think that I was the one that convinced her to be the best version of herself. I’d like for my relationships with her teachers to reflect that wish. I don’t see that in this article. I don’t see that in the mainstream media. How do we make this the highest priority?

This post was written by Emma Margraf, a foster parent and advocate.

Tonight the most important question I have to ask will be: is it appropriate to wear my t-shirt that has hip-hop stars on the side of Mt. Rushmore to the evening for new Upper School students and their parents at the fancy private school Jane will start this week? I can’t decide.

Yes, she was accepted to the private school. It was a pretty long admission process as the school wanted to be sure she had at least some idea of what she was in for. She starts this week. We were so lucky to find a way to pay for it—neither the agency with which I am licensed nor I have $22,000 lying around for one year of her education. In fact, when the check came in to the agency to cover the cost one of the administrators didn’t know what it was for and nearly had a heart attack. It was a letdown for him to realize it was already spent. (When I told a lawyer friend this story he said, “You know, one of the partners I work with said the other day that you can give a non-profit $5 to do $20 worth of work” – but that’s neither here nor there).

Her books cost $525—and most of them were used. When she saw the pile of them, she immediately took a picture to send to people so that they could be thoroughly impressed. There are TWO math books. The English books are on a wide range of topics, and she has already written a paper on her summer reading book. She didn’t write a paper all of last year.

What’s more, there is an English teacher from the school who has been voluntarily tutoring her this summer. She has been to several sessions, and is incorporating his feedback as she goes. We had a meeting with the advisor, the learning specialist, Jane’s caseworker, and my friend who works at the school already, tonight is the first of several back to school meetings. All the meetings include dinner.

It’s a good thing that there’s been so much preparation, because Jane’s got the summer doldrums. She’s been working as a counselor in training for the summer, and it’s not exactly what I hoped. All of the other kids from the Middle—that area of public school where kids get dropped off and left to their own devices –seem to be in this program too. The point of the program seems to be to have youth who are stuck in mediocre programs all through the school year teach younger kid how to be ready exactly for that too when they get older.

Jane’s interpretation of her job is to make sure the kids cross the street within the lines, that they are quiet, that they don’t rough house in the pool. None of the activities are memorable, but she has told me numerous times how important it seems to be to not bring peanuts in her lunch. There are so many campers, they need some extra help to keep track of them, and they seem to use the Counselors In Training as a second set of eyes to make sure kids aren’t misbehaving. When she gets home every day, she’s done so little actual thinking that she is super hyper all evening, asking me a billion questions while I try and push her out the door for a bike ride before the sun goes down.

When I was young I went to Shakespeare Camp. We performed comedies for four summers, and while I was there I learned to juggle, hang a spoon on my nose, and sing Elizabethan songs. After those years I worked as a junior counselor in a program that focused on wellness in combination with fairy tales of the outdoors that led to all of the junior counselors writing clues that were left throughout hiking trails for the kids to follow on an adventure.

The senior counselors in that program were directed to take us under their wing, and mine gave me The Prophet by Kahil Gibran and Johnathan Livingston Seagull while trying to convince me to write short stories and read them a loud on camp overnights.

The summer after my junior year in high school I was sent to math camp at Mt. Holyoke – a rebellious girls only program to aimed at ending the math divide between girls and boys. I made life-long friends there, and it gave me an opportunity to visit Fenway Park for the first time.

All things are possible. My parents never had a lot, and I honestly don’t know how I managed to get all of those opportunities. Nor should I have. It was their job to figure it out, and now it’s mine for Jane. I screwed this summer up, but have now learned my lesson. I know the kids at her new school aren’t working at keeping younger kids following the rules and only the rules this summer—at least I think they aren’t. I have visions of them serving as crew on sailing trips to Europe and learning to become trapeze artists. Next summer we’ll do a better job; there’s got to be some equivalent of learning to juggle or visiting Fenway Park.

In the meantime, I have Upper School New Student Night, Tenth Grade Outdoor Education Night, and I have to figure out what to wear to each while getting ready to be the youngest parent in the room again. If I had given birth to Jane I would have been 21 when she was born, which is much more common at public school than it is in the private ones I have been around.

Jane’s first day is Wednesday. Two of her teachers have PhDs. One is a retired military veteran who has lived all over the world. She’s hoping to be in the fall play.