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MIDTESOL Matters
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MIDTESOL Participates in TESOL Advocacy Day 2006
By Margaret Silver
On June 21, 2006, MIDTESOL's representative, Margaret Silver joined 21 other TESOL members representing 19 U.S.-based affiliates in Washington, DC, for TESOL Advocacy Day 2006. This event, the first of its kind for TESOL, featured a day of issue briefings and workshops, capped by visits to Congressional offices on Capitol Hill. The goals of Advocacy Day were not only to lobby on key issues for TESOL, but also to provide an interactive learning experience for affiliate representatives on elements of advocacy. By the end of the day, TESOL affiliate members visited over 40 Representatives and Senators to advocate for their local issues.
Before the June 21 trip to Washington, I had to set up my own individual meetings with my Congressional representatives. On the advice of TESOL, and to avoid the 3-week delay caused by the anthrax screening of all Congressional mail, I made the first contact by fax.
I followed my faxes to Senator James Talent and Congressman Russ Carnahan with phone calls. I started nearly 4 weeks before Advocacy Day. With this early contact, Sen. Talent's scheduler was easily able to accommodate the timeline TESOL had laid down for us. On the other hand, Rep. Carnahan's staff needed some subsequent phone call 'nudges' before I received a fixed appointment. I learned too that my meeting would be with one of the Congressman's staffers, not with the Rep. Carnahan himself. TESOL warned us not to be discouraged by this. Our legislators have so many requests for meetings that there aren't enough hours in the day to meet all of them, and TESOL assured us the staffers would be well-informed on the topic. They were! I was impressed with how easy the appointment-setting process was.
TESOL Advocacy Day began with a welcome by TESOL President Jun Liu. The participants were also joined by President Elect Sandy Briggs, and by TESOL Board member Brock Brady. John Segota, TESOL's Advocacy and Communications Manager, then led a morning of briefings from specialists in the three issue areas of K-12 education and No Child Left Behind, Adult Education and WIA (Workforce Investment Act), and immigration reform and university student visa issues. These briefings provided us with talking points for our afternoon meetings with the legislators.
We learned the importance of being factual, informative, succinct and on time. Pleas for support work better, we learned, if you can offer an achievable solution to the problems you are outlining. So, I made a point of summing up my facts and anecdotes with a specific request. The morning briefings ended with an opportunity to role-play my presentation with other TESOL advocates. In my case, after explaining that adult education had been flat funded for seven years and the impact on programming that this was having, I concluded with a request for increased funding for WIA. I was also careful to stay within the time frame that I had asked for.
One thing we all learned quickly was to wear comfortable shoes and business clothes. Although TESOL arranged bus transportation for us from our hotel to Capitol Hill, the shoes sustained us through the healthy hike from one office building to another. The business clothes helped us pass the usual inspection points in the buildings signaling our intention of doing business rather than just sight-seeing. During my meetings, the youth, earnestness and professionalism of the congressional staffers were impressive. And while they were careful to make no promises for their legislator, I found they listened to my message intelligently and with the appropriate amount of note-taking that left me feeling confident the Adult Education message would reach the ears of my senator and congressman.
In fact, WIA's funding came out of Committee shortly after June 21, and was subsequently voted on. We did not get our needed increase, but at least the Program is now funded.
Over dinner that evening, all the participants shared their experiences and what they had learned. Overall, we agreed this event was a very positive and valuable experience for us and for TESOL.
Additional information about TESOL Advocacy Day, including photographs and video of the interactive workshop, is available on the TESOL web site at http://www.tesol.org. If you are interested in learning more about your Congressional representatives, and the legislative issues TESOL is tracking, go the TESOL U.S. Advocacy Action Center at http://capwiz.com/tesol.
