Small Bites Friday Five 08-14-20:
20-30m – Sort through resources at NEA’s Black Lives Matter at School site and choose activities for the coming school year.
15-20m – Watch episodes 3, 4 and 5 of Small Bites. Use the info to make an impact on Tuesdays (see below).
10-15m –Listen to the brilliant young voices of the Social Justice Poets on NEA’s Youtube channel.
5-10m – Paste your latest 10 social media posts into WorditOut.com to get a snapshot of what’s important to you. Use the information for crafting your Tuesday message.
0-5m – Introducing #TeacherTurnout Tuesday. Make Tuesday your day to let elected officials know what they are doing well and what they can do better.
If there is one unifying theme in my blog and in #SmallBites, it’s social action. There can be no equity without action. There can be no inclusion without each one of us pushing for social justice. Maybe your pushing is marching with a sign. Maybe your pushing is ordering a novel by an author not on the “classics” list. Maybe your pushing for social justice is coming here to read and listen until you feel brave enough to step out.
Whatever your brand of pushing for equity is, it’s for sure easier when we do it together. The loud ones and the quiet ones. The ones who have been at the party forever and the ones who just arrived.
Tuesday is our chance. You’re on social media anyway, so whatever your platform of choice is, make Tuesday your day to tell elected officials how they are excelling or how they need to change to better meet the needs of the communities they serve. Educators wear so many hats, we have our fingers on the pulse of our communities in a way that no politician ever could, so here’s my ask:
Every Tuesday, send a post, tweet, email, letter or make a call to an elected official. It can be someone local, state or national. We may not all agree on what’s going right and what’s going wrong, but if nothing else, COVID has shown us that our voices are too often not taken into consideration even when things directly affect us.
Using the hashtag #TeacherTurnout, let’s make sure that our voices are heard and that the people we elect know that we are a creative, powerful, force to be reckoned with, unafraid to stand up for what we believe in.