Dog Days Advocacy Tuneup

ADVOCACY ISSUES FOR THE SUMMER DOLDRUMS


Hurricane Dolly has passed and the temperature is climbing back to the high ‘90’s. Not a good environment for mobilizing the masses to assault the citadels of power. Add to that the fact that the citadels are mostly empty: Congress is 2 weeks away from one of its many recesses, and candidates are stuck in that awkward moment between primaries and conventions.
The lazy, hazy days of summer are a good time to tune up our advocacy mechanisms and get ready for the battles to come. Here are some tips to follow for becoming an effective advocate:
· Have a good source of information about the issues that concern you: When you contact your lawmakers or agency heads, you need to be armed with facts, not rumors and impressions. An excellent place to start is TESOL (www.tesol.org). Our parent organization has a robust and active advocacy organization, which keeps membership current on the issues that affect our professional lives and the students we serve.

TESOL has two resources that are very useful for grassroots advocates:
1. At http://www.tesol.org/s_tesol/seccss.asp?CID=32&DID=37, you can see all the positions taken by the Board of TESOL on public issues. The latest three are the following:
a. Position Statement on the Status of, and Professional Equity for, the Field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (June 2008)
b. Position Statement on Professionalization and Credentialing for Adult ESOL Educators (April 2008)
c. Position Statement on Teacher Preparation for Content-Based Instruction (March 2008)
2. A very valuable TESOL resource is the US Advocacy Action Center, a one-stop mobilization tool, with instant access to your lawmakers and action alerts about key issues.
Go to http://capwiz.com/tesol/home/ and read about the latest legislative alert: support for the American Competitiveness Through International Openness Now (ACTION) Act of 2008 (S. 2653), also known as the “ACTION Act” (I do hope it will attract a less distracting acronym!) (http://capwiz.com/tesol/issues/alert/?alertid=11212261) This act seeks to take a number of measures to facilitate educational exchanges and entry of F-1 students to the US

· Write an informative, persuasive letter about your issue. Your congressperson and senators receive tons of mail every day, so your communication needs to be well-crafted to be effective. This means paying attention to the following points:
o Don’t make your letter too long: 1 page, 2 at the very longest.
o Don’t be abusive or threatening: it is such a short distance from the staff person’s chair to the waste can.
o Do your best to appeal to the national interest and the interest of the section represented by your legislator. Facilitating entry by F-1 students to the US is good for the U.S. (and Texas) . Of course, it is also good for Kazakhstan, but your senator doesn’t represent Kazakhstan.
Here again, the Capwiz folks at the Advocacy Action Center can be very helpful. For each Action Alert, they develop a template for writing an effective letter on the issue. By following this template, and modifying it to fit your circumstances, you can develop a hard-hitting e-mail or printed letter on your issue. (For a pertinent example of this template, enter your zip code in the box on the above-cited Action Alert page regarding the ACTION act).
· Don’t forget to follow all applicable laws and regulations regarding legislative communication! Specifically, do not
o Use letterhead stationary of your institution to write your letter;
o Use your institution’s e-mail server to send e-mail communications to legislators;
o Do your advocacy activity on your institution’s time, while you are at work.
Finally, stay in touch with the Advocacy Blog of TexTESOL-IV (http://textesol-iv-advocate.blogspot.com/) to get information about issues that affect our profession here in Southeast Texas.