Part 2 of 3 - guest blog by Emily Rose
So I told you yesterday that I'd be posting up a list of some steps that I took to plan for our petition drive, which will be taking place next week. Here they are - feel free to follow them as you plan your drive in your own school!
In order:
1. Get administrative and school board approval. This can be done in a lot of ways, but I used writing a memo and giving it to my principal, who later showed it to the board.
2. Talk to your newspaper staff and/or the Video Production class (or, the people who do morning announcements at your school). If you give the people a little bit of warning about when the petition drive is and when you expect to have announcements up, they’re usually more than happy to oblige.
3. Get student volunteers. These can be your friends, club members, classmates or anyone else who feels passionately about American education. If you have a hard time finding people, remember that blackmail helps.
4. Print up fliers, as well as volunteer passes and the actual petition slips (don’t forget name, birth date and e-mail!). Have these things ready early, as they can be easy to forget later on as the petition drive draws closer.
5. Catch a cold. Tell everyone that it is a sinus infection, and then mono. Cough violently without covering your mouth. Speculate loudly that you may have Hepatitis A-C. Stay home from school one day and watch Entourage on DVD for four straight hours. Get over it in a few days. (Note: this step is optional, but it’s certainly what I did.)
6. Post fliers all over school, but make sure they’re spaced appropriately apart as not to seem obnoxious or overbearing.
7. Costco fieldtrip! Buy gum to hand out when students sign the petition.
8. First day of petition: in the morning, send out volunteer reminders. During lunch, conduct the petition by going around to each table, explaining Our Education and asking students to sign. Hand out gum. Lather, rinse and repeat for all lunch periods.
9. Days 2-4 of petition: set up tables in the cafeteria with signs, petition slips and volunteers to help students sign up.
10. Friday of petition week: St. Patrick’s Day! You may believe in American education in general, but you do not believe in it today. Skip school, wear green, go downtown, watch the parade and enjoy your youth.
Granted, there will be people at your school who won’t want to sign the Our Education petition. These people are few and far between, but they’ll be jerks about it and give you a hard time. Smile at these people politely. Explain your cause and why they should support it. Offer them gum. If they want to keep on being difficult just for the sake of it, leave them be. After a classmate of mine told me that he was creating a petition that would call for the deterioration of public education, I was pretty upset. I didn’t understand 1.) Why he would be opposed to Our Education in the first place 2.) Why he wanted to be so rude to me personally. Five minutes later I got over it— the kid’s just a jerk and probably always will be. Our goal is to get a million signatures across the country, and there are almost 40 million people aged 13-24, so it's definitely ok if some people say they don't want to sign, better to spend our time on most of the other people our age who actually do care.
Come back tomorrow to read the rest of Emily's pre-petition blog thoughts!