Presentation for Advocacy 101: My Personal Journey
On March 5th, my friend Shawna Murphy, co-hosted a roundtable discussion on advocacy. I was invited to participate on the panel. These are my opening remarks.
My name is Carolyn Leith and I write for the Seattle Education blog. However, I think the real reason why I’m sitting at this table is because I’m a gifted trouble maker.
I want to share with you what I believe are the three ingredients to advocacy.
First, by being here, you’re demonstrated the first ingredient: A willingness to act on your passion to make a difference.
I started out sitting in the same place you are now. I wanted to do something, but couldn’t see how I could fit into the organizations that were doing the work.
One day, it hit me.
I didn’t need to join a group to work on the things I cared about. I could do it myself, with friends who were worried about the same things.
That’s when I started to write for the blog.
Writing led to making a connection with other people who were concerned about the brand new Smarter Balanced Assessment. Together we formed the Seattle Opt Out Facebook Group.
Through Seattle Opt Out, I met Shawna Murphy and we decided to create the tongue-in-cheek group, Teacher Retention Advocate Parents or TRAP.
Together we threw a half-baked bake sale at district headquarters to protest school Presentation for Advocacy 101: My Personal Journey | Seattle Education:
