Public Education Matters

Various student voices 0:08
Public education matters. Public education matters. Public education matters.

Jeff Wensing 0:15
This is Public Education Matters, brought to you by the Ohio Education Association.

Katie Olmsted 0:26
Welcome back to Public Education Matters. I'm Katie Olmsted, and I'm part of the communications team for the Ohio Education Association and the public school educators OEA represents in communities all across the state and in our state. What happens in the state house in Columbus has a huge impact on what happens in our public school classrooms everywhere, our lawmakers hand down policies, for better or worse, that really shape everything Ohio's educators can do and how they can do it. It is absolutely critical that Ohio lawmakers hear from Ohio educators as they're making those decisions. And OEA is one group that's Ohio's New Educators. For educators in the first 10 years of their career, they're really making a push to make sure ONE members have a seat at the table to have effective, ongoing conversations with their lawmakers to help shape education policy in our state. ONE member organizer, Alex Myers, is already having conversations like that with his local representatives. Alex teaches physical education in grades K through two in Marietta, and we spoke to him early in the summer, when work was already underway to make sure Ohio's New Educators had the strongest united voice possible heading into the new school year.

Katie Olmsted 1:54
Alex Myers, thank you so much for sitting down with us, especially sitting down with us over your summer break, but it has been a very busy time for the ONE Member organizers. Already, I'm talking to you June 16th. What have you been up to?

Alex Myers 2:10
Yeah, so already we have had our onboarding, which is basically where we all get together. The whole team will get together with our new member organizers, and we'll go through training like how to have one on one conversations, basically, what the grant is, what our goals are for the year, and how to reach those goals.

Katie Olmsted 2:31
I mean, it's a tough question to answer, but what are your goals? What's the whole point of having ONE Member organizers heading into this back to school period?

Alex Myers 2:41
Yeah. Well, what we want to do is we want to try to organize our members to be a little more active within the union, but also trying to find those potential members that aren't in OEA yet and try to convince them why it's important to join OEA.

Katie Olmsted 2:55
All right, so give me, give me your little pitch. What do you say to potential members about what being an OEA means to you?

Alex Myers 3:03
So what it means to me is just kind of growing our collective voice. So with more people we have, that just means more voices that we can have heard, and more possibilities for us to to grow and to and take, to get more action done and getting what we need to have a more safe and effective work environment.

Katie Olmsted 3:25
And of course, that's really true when it comes to your individual local when it comes to bargaining, your collective bargaining agreements, when it comes to just setting those workplace conditions. But when you're talking about the power of your collective voice, it can be so much bigger. What happens at the state house really makes a big difference, and ONE members are taking that very seriously. What's going on with that?

Alex Myers 3:45
Absolutely so we are working harder on kind of pushing our members to be advocates for legislation. We all know that teaching is a political job. I know people say that we're getting too political, but this is a political job, or basically run completely by legislation. If it's not, if it's not written down, we don't do it kind of thing. So we are looking to try to find more ways for people to get involved in advocacy. So really, what we want is to try to take that intimidation away from what advocacy is, and talking to legislators, you know, trying to teach them that they are just human beings, and it's not that you have to know everything about the law or everything about bills or anything like that. It's just finding your place as to what you can do, and taking that intimidation out being more proactive than reactive is very important to us as well.

Alex Myers 4:27
And it's not about knowing every detail of the law, but the what you're an expert in is education. You know every detail of what it's like to be in with your students every day.

Alex Myers 4:58
Right. We are really looking to help people share their stories, because that's the that's the thing these days, I don't think no number or piece of data or graph or chart that you're going to share with our legislators is going to make any difference at the moment. They're looking for stories. They, they really want people. They really like to use people's stories to push their agendas rather than just the data and numbers. It doesn't seem like that's helping anymore. So sharing your story and allowing them to share your story is what's going a little bit further. It seems like.

Katie Olmsted 5:32
Have you had conversations with lawmakers in the past where you've shared your story?

Alex Myers 5:38
Yeah, I, I try to stay persistent in keeping in touch with my local legislators, my district's representative and senators, trying to keep open communication with them as much as I can. And what I really try to do is make sure that I'm not being that person that's only going to them angry and with complaints. I try to think of it as you know, for for us teachers, the best example is parents. If you have a parent who's always coming to you and complaining over and over and over, after a while, you start to drown them out a little bit. But if you have one that comes to you and just talks to you, and it's pleasant and it's nice and it's nothing intimidating or ready for a fight every single time you talk, but then they eventually come to you and say, "Hey, what I don't really like what's going on here". "Can we talk about it?" That perks their ears up a little bit more than than the person who's just constantly yelling and arguing and emailing with negative, negative, negative. So those are the kinds of things that we're trying to look at. So sharing your story is kind of that, that in of, hey, this isn't something scary. I'm not here to argue with you. I just want to tell you a story, and hopefully you use it, or hopefully it changes your mind, or or puts into perspective what I'm seeing as well.

Katie Olmsted 7:02
And again, keeping in mind that I'm talking to you in mid June, and at this point in time that I'm recording this, we don't know what's going to happen with the state budget, but boy, is it a time to be alive in public education in Ohio. What are the big issues you're trying to get lawmakers to sit down with you about and to hear your story?

Alex Myers 7:25
So a lot of it is about what we're passionate about in my area is the health insurance issues. Trying to get some legislation about taking care of our health insurance. We are really struggling. We just got an email this morning about it honestly. But health insurance, you know, bussing issues, overall funding for special education, like our Title One programs, our intervention programs, are very important to us as well, but also just hearing about student behavior or testing. I mean, there's so many that could go on and on about but you know, testing, overall, it takes up so much time of our day and sharing that story of what the kids are losing by taking all the time to assess and take data, rather than to use that data and continue on with the teaching and building relationships with our students. That's also another one that we're really fighting for, and the final one that's kind of become a big issue lately was the Life Wise Academy and how that's impacting our communities and our students. It's not all just about funding, but there are small things that we can push for and fight for that take that day to day stuff away from our students, that that we are trying to push for right now.

Katie Olmsted 8:49
When you first started having conversations with your lawmakers about any of these issues, did you feel that sense of intimidation that you're trying to head off in other members?

Alex Myers 8:58
Yes, I did. My first experience actually was in DC when I went with a physical education group called Shape America. I we had a think, four hour online training and then an eight hour in person training, and I was still I had no idea what to expect. They would tell you kind of what you're talking about, but not really what to expect. And I want to try to tell people that, you know there isn't that intimidation there. You're technically their boss. You've you are their constituents. They should be listening to you and that you don't like I said before. You don't have to be the expert in the legislation. If they ask you questions, you can always that's a good chance to say, "No, I'm not really sure about that, but I'm going to follow up", and that gives you that opening for the second conversation. Oh yeah. Also, you know, just being that person that tells the story, you can have multiple people in the room with you. You can tell your story while other people are talking about the legislation side of it. You can just be the person that has the conversation and ask them about their experiences, their story, their experiences in education, their story behind why they become a legislator, and get them talking about themselves. You can be that person as well.

Katie Olmsted 10:19
Because at the end of the day, it's, it's not about the legislation as much as it's about the impact on the real people. And you're the real people, yep, and your students are the real people.

Alex Myers 10:30
Yeah, we're the real people. And then also treating them like they're human as well, because we also know that the legislators are human, and if we continue treating them like they're not, they're going to treat us like we're not. And I think there, the other part is looking at the humanity all around is very important.

Katie Olmsted 10:51
And it sounds like there are some some pushes to help you have even more productive conversations with our lawmakers.

Alex Myers 10:57
Yeah, with the help of Dan Ramos, pretty soon, we'll be getting a training so the entire group will be trained on it, and will be a little more active on getting the entire group, because we used to, we had a have a work group called the political advocacy, advocacy work group. And there they were the ones that really focused on the legislative part of it and building these relationships. But with the help of Dan, we'll all as a collective group be working on building these relationships and pushing for smarter, common sense legislation.

Katie Olmsted 11:30
Dan Ramos, the OEA Director of Government Relations.

Alex Myers 11:34
Dan this was Dan's idea of thinking that he could come to this group and help them be a little bit more active and understanding of what's going to happen and what to expect. And I don't know if that means that we are going to wind up having their our own Lobby Day or anything like that. That's not I'm not really sure about what that holds, but I'm looking forward to it.

Katie Olmsted 11:58
And I'm sure it will open doors one way or another, to have more conversations with your leaders, and again, give you more of those opportunities to grow the power of your collective voice.

Alex Myers 12:12
Right. Yeah, yeah. We'll have those great opportunities. I think it'll just, it'll help us be a little bit more informed as the how to move forward, and all of our different options. I think right now, we're kind of just fighting in one direction, but I think with Dan's help, we'll have that that background and the tools that we need to kind of hit from all directions, rather than just from one.

Katie Olmsted 12:38
Because the problems come from all directions. Sometimes kind of feels like fighting a Hydra. How do you not get I guess, how do you continue to show up and continue to share your story when sometimes there are setbacks and sometimes there's frustration and disappointment?

Alex Myers 13:01
Well, I think for for me, I'm trying to be as proactive as I can. So that would mean I am starting immediately, having a conversation and building that relation, having those relational conversations, rather than transactional with our legislators, and just calling them up, sending them an email, asking them how they're doing, finding out about, you know, what's going on in their lives, and reacting and reacting to that in a way where you know, if you know something's going on in their life, a parent passes away, we send them a card and say, "Hey, sorry for your loss". Stuff like that, and building that relationship over a longer period of time makes it feel like that. We're, you know, we're more friendly than we are combative, and if something weren't isn't going our way, we know, okay, but maybe there was a step forward. Maybe there was some kind of they're still talking to us. It's not like we've lost that relationship. And I think that keeps me moving forward a little bit, because I know it is a longer process than just a simple I'm going to call and send an email and I'm going to get I'm going to change the world, because I know it's going to take time, so I look for those small, positive steps that we've taken, whether they're just emailing me and asking me what my thoughts are on a bill that's coming up, that's a big positive step, and that kind of keeps you pushing forward. That's a huge step. Yeah, so even if they don't follow my advice, and they don't vote the way, I'm hoping, they at least asked, and I think that's a step that keeps you moving forward. We have some issues with people who are so so combative all the time that they're not going to reach out to it's like they said with the parents earlier. You're not going to reach out to those parents who are constantly yelling at you. So if you continue that that step, and there's a plate time and place for that, but if you continue that step, you're not going to get those positive pieces, and you just get more and more angry, like right now, I'm I'm disappointed, but I know the last time we were in the state house, there were steps made. There were people who were planning on voting yes on the bill, who voted no after conversations, and we're we're seeing those small things. It's not enough people, but we're moving some. That's what keeps me going, is those small positive steps.

Katie Olmsted 15:31
And when it comes to building those relationships over time, like you're doing with those lawmakers, I think that really speaks to the power of ONE in itself, Ohio's New Educators is about having those relationships with people who are earlier in their careers face different challenges than people in other parts of their careers, and having the support of other people who are right there with you. What's that experience been like for you?

Alex Myers 15:59
It's been great. I'm learning a lot about not just the organization, but not just our members, but a lot about myself and what I can and can't handle. And I think the best thing about the our organization, Ohio's New Educators, is that we give a lot of people grace. So we give each other grace is knowing that it is a very difficult job to be an educator, and it's a very time consuming job to be an educator, but also we know the work is important, so we put our our full force into organizing, and we give each other the grace knowing that doing both at the same time is a lot. And what I'm really enjoying about it is just talking to people from all over Ohio and learning all these different experiences and how they may have different experiences, but we're all kind of in that same boat. And you think that maybe if you're from a rural district, that's going to be very different from an urban district, but we all have are seeing the same problems, and we're seeing the same things with our kids. That may not have been a perspective that we've seen before, that I might have known before, so I'm starting to see that things across Ohio are very similar, any that were different people and might have different perspectives on life, we have the same goals, and also trying to find that middle ground between people who are from different areas or from different backgrounds, and speaking of political but different political parties as well, and finding that middle ground with them, and finding the common commonalities that we all have, especially when it comes to our students.

Katie Olmsted 17:51
And that's the thing about it, that public education is inherently, as you mentioned, political because what happens in our classrooms is set by lawmakers and policymakers, but it isn't partisan. Supporting public education is not a partisan thing.

Alex Myers 18:10
No, no, I've never thought it was. I actually identify as an independent, and we all want the same for kids, which is just the best for our students and for for each other. And that really isn't a partisan thing. It's just a human, human, common human experience thing where if, if you're not supporting our public education, that's just not human. These are our kids. These are 90% of our of our children in Ohio that are being affected by this and and, you know, it's, it's, it feels like it's partisan at the moment, but it really shouldn't be, and really isn't. It's just we don't care about the other things, even though I do say that all legislation in some way affects public education, but those aren't our focuses. We want to focus on what's directly affecting our students, what's directly affecting our families and our classrooms, and how can we just make that better? It's not it's not about who you're talking to. It's about what you're talking about that's really important to us.

Katie Olmsted 19:22
Well, Alex Myers, thank you so much for talking to us about this today.

Alex Myers 19:27
Oh yeah no problem, thank you for having me on this was fun.

Katie Olmsted 19:32
Your voice is needed in these conversations with Ohio policymakers too. Make sure you're keeping up to date with the latest legislative watches and action alerts on OEA's website, ohea.org, and make sure you subscribe to public education matters, wherever you get your podcasts, so you don't miss one of our conversations in the future. Next week, we're hearing from two mid career educators who say the mid career voice has been missing from a lot of important conversations. They talk to us about how. What they're working with other OEA members to do about that. Join us for that discussion and others this season, as new episodes continue to drop every Thursday, because in Ohio, public education matters.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai