In the beginning, I was just a member of my local association. A couple of years later, I became a building representative. I would go to the meetings, share information, attend workshops for professional development. I kept going to all of these different activities, and then I realized how much I had grown professionally and how everything I was learning helped my students, too. My leadership qualities just kept growing.
And then Oklahoma had the huge walk out a couple of years ago, and I really turned my focus toward the elections. In my congressional district, we had a representative who was anti-public education and supported charter schools and vouchers. She would not listen to educators and offered little toward public education.
I got involved in the next election. With my local and state associations, we interviewed candidates, and eventually backed a primary candidate who supported public education. We made phone calls, stood on street corners with signs, held meet and greets. We had all kinds of opportunities to get to know and meet Robert Manger.
This was a big deal for us, and things became tense leading toward the general election.
I had never been involved with any type of election before. I had no experience, but I had so many people from the Oklahoma Education Association telling me, ‘Why don’t you do this? It’s okay to do this. We’ll support you if you want to have this event.’
OEA was there every step of the way—even our executive director stood on the streets with us, holding a sign.
We had a lot of community support and teachers who advocated for their profession, supported their association, and wanted what was best for their students.
Our candidate ended up winning and he’s been supportive of our issues, has voted favorably on bills we care about, and is willing to talk to us. It doesn’t get any better than that.
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