Vital Advocacy: Information, Alliances and
Program Presence
When I was a high-school coach, I was used to
hearing my colleagues say "The best defense is good offence." It
is indeed discouraging and stressful to have to defend an effective
French program, so here are three tips for maximizing your "time of
possession", that is to say, while your program is not being seriously
challenged.
• First, you create a public presence for what you
do with students, as a "French program". This means making intentional
references to it as a "program", even if you are the only teacher and
teach two or three courses. If you don't have one already, start
a French Club. Every time your classes or the French Club do
anything special, make sure your community knows about it (guest
speaker, dinner-and-a-movie, community or educational service,
involvement with exchange students, field trip, bake sale, etc) through
your school or local newspaper or newsblog, events podcasting system,
local radio or television station. Keep a scrap-book and a web site or
blog with photos. Now there are at least three of you serving students;
French club, teacher(s), program. Three is a more influential number
than one, and since a teacher is no longer the sole representative of
French, if the teacher leaves, this is less likely to imply the end of
French. Those who are French teachers, you know best how to make your
program engaging, relevant, informative and excellent. Even if you are
already using promotional materials from the AATF national advocacy web
site*, it is a good idea to localize your publicity with a reference to
your local program. Attach a note with "Find out about our French
program at..." to posters and other materials.
• Second is an assessment of all the potentially
influential people around you locally in the construction of strategic
alliances. Naturally the AATF will stand by a good French program, but
in some cases, we are just viewed as outsiders with vested interests.
How about your students, alumni, their parents, guidance counselors,
the school board, the PTO local and state politicians? How about
that colleague in Geography or History, who spoke in your class about
the European Union or the French and Indian War? Are there French
speakers living in your part of the state? Any one of them is a
potential ally. Is there a French historical presence in your community
or region? Then there is probably a local history society with members
who might be concerned about the health of a French program. Are their
French-owned and Francophone-owned businesses nearby, or perhaps local
companies with offices or a big-time exporting stake in French-speaking
countries? Representatives from all of these could speak to
the issue of the importance of French. Pick potential allies carefully,
because alliances can go two ways. You may wind up going to a few
more meetings or eating lunch with a different crowd once in a while,
but you will very likely extend the resource base of your program and
you will find out that French matters to people outside of your
classroom.
• The third, information, is paramount. Without it,
French is just another small high-quality program, and you have no way
of identifying the expert-witness status of allies. What kind of
information you have is also crucial. While the arguable national and
international relevance of French available from two well-known web
sources** may seem weighty enough to sway the cynics in a Senate
hearing, it may not have the desired effect on local power
players. These people are much more concerned with keeping the
auto-parts factory in town, attracting the photonic router company to
the industrial park, and making sure the district's high-school
graduates can get jobs in one or the other. What they want is
state and local-specific information about why knowledge of French and
French-speaking cultures may be beneficial to their constituencies
right where they live with pertinent demographic, economic, social, and
historical connections. This is why the AATF national advocacy web
site* links you to information about the 41 states for which their is
either a state-specific French advocacy web site or an official AATF
French advocacy fact pack. Now you have a start on information relative
to where you live. It is up to you to do two things using this web
site: 1) Find and expand the information which is truly local to
your district, county or metropolitan area. 2) Using the section called
"Local Level - Profiling School Districts where French programs are in
trouble", make as complete a description of your school district as you
can. Allies from outside the school or districts will be able to
combine this with other information to become the fully informed
advocates you want. Develop activities for your students based on
the French connections you have found. Reward students who sleuth new
legitimate information about local French connections. Perhaps
your classes and your French club could even develop a newsletter fro
parents, the school and your network of allies, which would include
this French connection material, in addition to reports on French Club
activity, field trips, and a Francophone culture feature.
Program presence, alliances and information are the proverbial legs of
the tripod or three-legged stool, and no program missing one of these
will remain standing in the political adversity of today's educational
institutions or the severe budget constraints of our recessionary
times.
However, these are not an auto-pilot for an advocacy campaign. You
cannot "set it and forget it", like something in
infomercial. Advocacy is often dynamic, interactive and
strategic all at once; so, your constant vigilance and action should
lead to something other than a flood of letters to the school board.
Remember that in the end, your charge is to bring about an abiding
belief in the necessity and beneficial nature of your program; not
simply a reprieve for it.
Robert D. Peckham, PhD
AATF Advocacy Commission Chair
Professor of French
University of Tennessee at Martin
Web References:
•The French Language Initiative (The World Speaks French)
http://www.theworldspeaksfrench.org/
**French - The Most Practical Foreign Language
http://www.majbill.vt.edu/fll/french/whyfrench.html
**On the Importance of Knowing French
http://www.utm.edu/staff/globeg/profren.shtml