Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/618594
COMMUNIQUÉ A PUBLICATION OF THE IOWA STATE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION – DEC/JAN 2016 – Vol. 53, No. 3 IN THIS ISSUE: OPINION Make it Your Caucus Who's Who at the Statehouse MEMBERS AT WORK Going the extra mile 3 8 13 Set it... Set it... and forget it! and forget it! E-DUES AVAILABLE NOW! E-DUES AVAILABLE NOW! FOLLOW US ON: Many educators are loath to think of themselves as political actors. Yet nearly every part of an educator's professional life is dictated by politics. Curriculum decisions are political. Teacher, administrator and student evaluation measures are political. Working conditions, class sizes and funding for programs are all political. Even what content goes into a textbook is political. Education is political. How can educators not be? "Politics are interesting to me, I've done it from a really young age," says Jamie Vircks, an early childhood teacher at Louisa-Muscatine who has six years in the profession. Her first political activity came when she door-knocked for family friend and state Rep. Todd Taylor when she was an elementary school student in Cedar Rapids. But her real political education came as a senior in high school when she helped organize her fellow show choir kids to help save funding for the arts in public schools. Ann O'Leary is thinking about the typical work day of a public school teacher as the Iowa landscape along Interstate 80 whizzes by her passenger side window. "One of the things I've heard over and over again is how much teachers need time to really prepare and to think and to learn and to keep their own growth happening," she says. "And the question is how can we find ways to support that at the federal level." O'Leary is a lawyer, non-profit leader, and a mother of two from Oakland, California. She's also the top education policy adviser to former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. That last role is the reason she spent part of this month meeting with Iowa State Education Association members to talk about education policy, and, more importantly, listen. For six stops in five Iowa cities, O'Leary did just that. At each location – from the upstairs meeting room of the public library in Bettendorf to the basement at the Screaming Eagle in Waterloo and the media center at Ames Middle School, among others – O'Leary told the audience "I want to hear from you" as she encouraged them to share their experiences and stories. These were members-only meetings. Media wasn't invited. It was just O'Leary, her notebook and smart phone. She's taking what she learned from ISEA members and sharing it with Clinton Working for change Members shape presidential policy See CHANGE page 10 See POLICY page 10 Exceptional ISEA members promote strong public school policy outside the classroom so all have better experiences in it. Top Clinton aide spends three days touring Iowa to hear from ISEA members about their priorities for federal education policy. Louisa-Muscatine Elementary School teacher Jamie Vircks displays a few of the souvenirs she's picked up over the years of her political activism and advocacy on behalf of public education. Anne Marie Kraus (left) talks with Hillary Clinton policy advisor Ann O'Leary during a stop in Cedar Rapids. O'Leary spent three days speaking with Iowa Education Association members to help inform Clinton's federal education policy proposal, parts of which will be announced in January.