Sorry, I didn’t post last night about the afternoon sessions. It was a long day beginning at 7:30 in the morning and lasting until 8:30 at night. All I had time to do was fix a few typographical errors in the previous post.

Highlights from Connecting the Fight for Democracy to the Fight to Save Public Education:

Democracy is learrned in the classroom. Sometimes formally in the curriculum, but also in how the classroom functions: how teachers establish the ethos to guide its function, how peers interact with one another, and how the adults react to those peer interactions.

Good schools cannot teach democracy alone and achieve societal goals; investment in the community is needed as well through the provision of means to achieve health care, eliminate hunger, etc. Anti-democratic forces know this and want to eliminate both.

Converting federal involvement into block grants takes away the federal government’s ability to specify rules and conditions that worked to achieve fairness and equity. Dismantling federal agencies does the same.

It is futile to meet this moment with past practices and strategies. We must build a movement of the many to not only defend, but improve local schools and government services. Don’t defend general ideas or institutions. Focus on individual impacts. Reach out to win over the one-third of the electorate that did not vote.

Highlights from Flipping the Conversation and Changing the Narrative:

No one will be persuaded if they are given facts and figures–storytelling is the key. Know your audience, establish a common language, provide a clear, coherent, and cohesive story that has emotion; also, don’t memorize or improvise, but practice the story and act natural.

E.g., ask people how many days of schooling do their children lose if a state adopts a certain law or policy? Four? People will react because it has become personal to them if a policy costs their children days of learning.

Change from talking about the vehicle to talking about the destination. Shift from discussing a policy to exploring the policy’s impact on the audience. Put faces on the policy changes. Who was affected? What’s their story?

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Don’t qualify or condition statements. Say the thing, have passion over polish, and don’t run on. Too much detail buries the message.

Name the villain. Who is responsible? Be direct and focus on a common enemy, which does not have to be a person. Avoid passive language.

Utilize social media platforms. Be simple and consistent, but vary the content of what is posted. Engage with people to grow followers. Learn how to use the different platforms.

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Get to the why, i.e. who has controlled the legislature and school funding when people talk about bad schools and low test scores. Be a truthteller. Show up. Give your testimony. Don’t overlook any area or group of people, for example, rural Americans.

Put out reports. Bring media attention and develop relationships with reporters and journalists. Use charts and graphs to make things easily understandable. Attach the report to real people. Provide fact sheets and stories. It’s an all of the above strategy.

Don’t overlook AI and put your content on the internet. Use AI to pick up the content and provide it when people are using AI and chatbots to find information. It will use the content in its results.

Thank the media for the stories it reports when it provides a positive message for schools. Comment on stories; submit questions.

This isn’t polished content but a quick summation of all I learned yesterday afternoon. We have more sessions today and close out with a keynote address by Governor Walz. I’ll provide a final update late this afternoon. Have a happy Sunday!