You Don't Have Time Not to Advocate

STRONG ADVOCACY IN PLAIN LANGUAGE

Advocacy is speaking out in support of a cause in which you believe. It is not protecting your job or turf, although those might be side effects. Advocacy is stronger when the speakers are stakeholders who benefit from the library’s programs in support of student achievement rather than librarians.

Strong advocacy relies on the PR and marketing we do every day when we do our jobs well. PR means making sure we have a clear mission to implement which fuels our consistent messaging to stakeholders. The community remains aware of what our school library programs are and do to support student achievement. We can ask them to advocate on our behalf, to speak out to administrators, school boards, and legislators.

Now let’s back up. The first two paragraphs are filled with library speak: advocacy, stakeholders, mission, messaging, and programs. While these are the right words to use within our profession, we need to find ways to do these things without using jargon. Our messages need to be in plain language, easily understood by the specific audience who needs to hear and act.

MAKE YOURSELF VISIBLE AND INDISPENSABLE

I have practiced PR and marketing for years on my campus. I work in a PreK-8 private school of 700 students in Houston. I don’t have district hierarchy or state-mandated testing, but I do have a demanding parent body who expects high success from their students, and a campus leadership that works hard to honor that requirement. I need to work hard on a daily basis to be sure faculty, students, administrators, and parents understand what the library does and why: I write a short piece for every newsletter sent home. I attend faculty, grade level, and department meetings. I sit on every curriculum committee I can. I am a core member of the Technology Leadership team. I make myself indispensable in a hundred ways, and yes, that is a fulltime job in addition to my regular duties in the library, supporting readers advisory, collection development, and literacy, whether media, digital, informational, or visual, etc.

SPEAK UP FOR OTHERS

In October 2013 a Houston Chronicle article (www.houstonchronicle.com/news/education/article/Ranks-of-school-librarians-dwindle-in-HISD-4876366.php) announcing the elimination of Pershing Middle School’s librarians pushed me to use what I know about advocacy on behalf of the district librarians. I am a non-district voice, a Houston resident and voter, but not employed in HISD. I already knew that many HISD schools had lost certified library staff and/or closed the library entirely, but Pershing’s program was very strong. I decided it was time to raise my voice, to use my knowledge in support of district school libraries. I made friends with a retired HISD librarian, and together we are building community awareness of the essential role school libraries can and should play in student achievement and improving test scores.

HISD is one of the largest districts in the United States, hampered by the same budget crises as most other districts, multiplied by the number of students impacted. The state focus on test scores is a huge issue that affects every campus. Texas is a leader in using test scores as a measure of teacher evaluation. Without a demonstrable connection between library services and student test taking, librarians struggle to break through preconceptions and old stereotypes. But that direct connection exists and we librarians know it. Texas has the research from 2001 (www.tsl.texas.gov/sites/default/files/public/tslac/ld/pubs/schlibsurvey/survey.pdf), and many other states have more recent research. The challenge is to translate the dull graph (TSLAC 193) into stories that stakeholders can really understand. Our fledgling Houston effort involves a small group of committed librarians, a robust website (www.studentsneedlibrariesinHISD.org), budding relationships with related community groups and school board members, and lots of ideas to bring more concrete advocacy tools to a broader audience. Yes, it is a slow road, but we can see a few small changes. Our work with current district librarians is a slow and quiet support of their campus advocacy despite a sometimes hostile work environment. We are also in conversation with district library leadership to see how best to support their internal efforts. And we are addressing questions to school board members about decisions that impact student learning without awareness of existing library programs that might have strong and more cost-effective results.

COMPELLING DATA HELPS SPREAD THE WORD

We started by compiling and posting publicly a compilation of data delineating for the community which campuses have libraries, which have certified librarians, teachers, or aides, and which are moving back to certified librarians or away from library services. This data is broken down by school board district so that every school board member and voter can see.(www.studentsneedlibrariesinhisd.org) We sent this data directly to the school board, with a specific focus on those who were up for election in 2013. We also worked on 2014 incumbents and challengers. The website offers links to AASL and TASL advocacy support tools and a collection of articles about school libraries, their impact, and successful advocacy efforts for use by anyone working on their campus.

Business cards were the next step. We hand them out whenever we can to anyone who will listen. We have worked to connect with school board members. My partner’s experience working in HISD gives her awareness of how the system works and how important the school board members are. My outside perspective keeps us well grounded in a broader reality and aware of AASL initiatives. As we focused on the election, we attended campaign events for both incumbents and challengers, and followed up with email contact, information, questions, and support on library issues. At least one challenger who was not elected continues to work with us, and we with her, through Community Voices for Public Education (CVPE, http://communityvoicesforpubliceducation.wordpress.com/about), a grassroots effort to effect change in HISD in many directions—advocacy at its best in spreading the word to a broad community group. 2014’s school board incumbents were friendly to libraries in the past, so we’ll be working to build a broader conversation. Our efforts to date have had the word “school library” mentioned in several board discussions, with more frequency than previously. We appreciate our small victories.

BE NOTICED EVERY DAY

Every library needs to be noticed every day. Use social media. If your campus knows what they would lose if you were cut back even a little, advocates are more likely to speak up. Tell them about the new books that arrived, even if they are used books donated by a friend. Run a fun contest to get kids excited about visiting your library. Find ways to support testing that also reinforce library goals. Be creative. Be essential and tell everyone how you matter. Even better, find ways to draw teachers and parents in for continuing education, ESL sessions, and parenting book discussions—whatever works. Don’t get discouraged by the idea that you don’t have time. The reality is that you don’t have time not to do these promotions. You need their voices. Once you have their attention, you can ask them to speak out on behalf of the program.

One request from the participating librarians of our group has been a hiring tip sheet which might double as a hint of questions principals could use when walking through their campus libraries. What would an administrator want to see that would demonstrate a strong program? When we come right down to it, these might be the same questions parents might want to use, or to answer when talking to principals. In my work with the Texas Association of School Libraries Legislative & Advocacy Committee, we updated an existing list of questions for the state PTA conference—questions that really get to the heart of what parents, teachers, campus administrators, and district leadership should be hoping to find for every student. When these questions have strong answers, aggregated student test scores will average higher than in schools where this is not true. Now we are beginning to get a story that can be used to impact budgets.

MISSION AND VISION ARE YOUR FOUNDATION

What product are you selling? What is your library’s mission? You may have a district library mission decreed from above, and you likely have a school mission as well. But you need to take the time to think about and write down your own school library mission. What will your library do to support student growth? It doesn’t have to be long—a sentence or two. It does need to echo the school and the district, but personalize it to your campus. Campus stakeholders will see that you have targeted their needs in overarching ways. Once you have a written mission, you can build your activities on it. Those activities won’t be very different from what you do now, except that the focus will be on your students, teachers, and families. Build the story. Use vignettes from your various events. Don’t just give the facts. Give student examples, quality work products, favorite books as selected by students, and teacher quotes.Remind everyone to spread the word about what you do. Tell other parents, remind the principal how popular your programs are and how Johnny is reading better because of your resources, and write the school board or a legislator.

FROM MISSION TO REALITY WITH A STRATEGIC PLAN

You might also spend a bit of time thinking out a strategic plan for your library. While that term may sound highfalutin, it really only means that you will continue the thought process of making your mission concrete, of planning the steps to best support campus academic achievement for all students. It is an outline for the story you want to be able to tell. Involve your campus community in the development of your plans. While a strategic plan is not a foolproof final product, the existence of a written document spelling out your short and long-term library goals to administrators and parents demonstrates how carefully you target your resources, no matter how limited, toward student growth with faculty support as a byproduct. The strategic plan clarifies for you, as well as for everyone else, what you do. Now you have a multidimensional definition of your program in support of students, a story to market. And your story will continue to grow and change with student needs. Administrative awareness of your focus can translate to increased support. It may take time and repeated demonstration, but it will make inroads.

BE THE SQUEAKY WHEEL

So, we have a mission, a plan, an image—a story. You’ve begun marketing and even inspired advocacy. Remember to ask your stakeholders to speak for your program, to explain how much it matters to their students’ success and achievement. Now they can advocate for you. Outside voices carry more weight as they carry the message that your program matters to the success of the students. We all know that the squeaky wheel often gets the grease. Small squeaks get louder if not attended to. Keep asking for grease. Let the persistent squeaks raise awareness of a problem.

Possibly, your mission, image, message, and marketing have demonstrated that the school library is essential and everyone accepts it as integral to the school. If you find yourself in that situation, keep working. Complacency is a problem of its own. Even when all is going great, continue to approach your stakeholders to keep them involved in your program. Look ahead. Update your plan to reflect school library trends, digital needs, etc. If they forget your value, you have to start again.

In the current climate, it is more likely that even the best mission and message will require ongoing persistence on every front. But you can and will build a small group, then a larger one, of vocal advocates to carry your message. Students can be the most impactful. But you need a full range of advocates: students, parents, teachers, and administrators. Remember, you don’t have time not to encourage advocacy; you don’t have time not to turn your mission and plan into image and message, into community enthusiasm which then becomes advocacy. Every week, every day, all year in small ways. Start squeaking and don’t stop!