Advocating for Our Profession: Crafting Your Message (Part 3)

by Paul Clinton, Past-President WAHPERD

part 1 | part 2

In this three-part series of articles on advocating for our profession, I explained why we need to advocate and I focused on the single most important audience you really must plan to advocate to - your school board. In this last article I want to get down to the difficult but key task of actually creating an effective advocacy message.

But first let me restate my three rules of advocacy because I'll refer to these three rules as I explain how to develop an advocacy message:

First Rule of Advocacy: Do Some, It Works. Get over whatever is keeping you from advocating for your profession and start taking action right NOW.

Second Rule of Advocacy: Repeat the Message. Once is never enough. A message must be repeated numerous times to sink in and by repeating the message you gain confidence and get better at delivering it. Once you have confidence delivering an advocacy message you will do it more often and you are on your way to becoming a better advocate for whatever you are passionate about in your profession and life.

Third Rule of Advocacy: Be Patient, Be Persistent. "X" amount of advocacy does not necessarily lead to "Y" amount of results. Results take time and often you cannot predict when, where, or even if your message will be successful. An example I've experienced would be our efforts to increase our state AHPERD membership. We reached an eight-year high in membership but it took much longer that I expected and I don't know which of our advocacy strategies was responsible for our success.

Now let's craft a great advocacy message step-by-step. For each step, I will try to give you a real life example from my own advocacy efforts.

STEP ONE: Define what you will advocate for.
We all have many issues we could advocate for but to craft a good message we must focus on just one concrete issue or we, and our audience, will lose focus. I have heard educators make advocacy statements that included so many issues that neither I nor the intended audience, really understood what was being asked for. It sometimes seemed that even the speaker had lost track of their own thoughts. My advice to you is to write down those things that you are passionate about and would like to see happen, but then choose just ONE to write an advocacy message for.

As an example for this article, consider the sadly not-so-hypothetical situation of a school district considering replacing elementary physical education taught by certified physical education teachers with recess-style activity classes monitored by non-educators. Your advocacy message would focus specifically on the ways in which regular physical education classes taught by certified physical educator's benefits the students in your district.

STEP TWO: Understand the rules that govern an effective message¹
Losing focus or going off on a tangent is all too easy to do when trying to craft or deliver an advocacy message especially when you are passionate about the topic. Keep in mind the following rules of thumb to help you stay focused:

• Have one main message supported by no more than three other underlying and related themes.
• Messages must be simple. You must be able to explain your key points in a sentence or two.
• Messages need to be clear and concise, not just sound bites.
• Your message needs to be consistent and repeated often. It can be tailored to a particular audience, but the heart of the message must stay consistent and honest.
• Your message should be included in all of your relevant communications. An effective advocacy message cannot be repeated too often.
• Crafting an effective advocacy message is hard work. It takes time and should not be rushed.

STEP THREE: Define your audience
While the rules that govern an effective message say that the message must remain consistent, clearly we can tailor the presentation to a particular audience and media. Typical advocacy audiences for physical educators are school principals, PTSAs, school boards, superintendents, state legislators or state boards of education. Once you identify the audience, ask yourself what decisions this specific audience can actually make. Most education professionals cannot make important decisions without first consulting others, so you also need to know who the other key decision-makers are.

The audience I will address as an example in this article, is the school board and superintendent. It will be a verbal presentation at a school board meeting and I also hope to influence the public in attendance whom the school board must ultimately answer to.

STEP FOUR: Write your main message
Your main message needs to be communicated clearly in one sentence. Devote as much as 50% of your time to crafting that sentence! Make it clear, concise, and say exactly what outcome you want. You will probably go through many drafts and you should have others check your message for clarity.

Here's an example of my main advocacy message for a school board meeting:

"I am here this evening to encourage you to continue to provide a full educational experience to the elementary students of the ___________ District by continuing to provide quality physical education classes taught by certified professionals."

Notice that this is a succinct and clear message with a very specific outcome or call to action: A request for the district to continue to provide quality physical education.

STEP FIVE: Determine what threshold must be overcome
The threshold is what people need to know, believe, or be convinced to care about in order to become engaged with your issue. In effect, to buy your message! You need to let them know why they should pay attention to your message and you must do this within the first couple of sentences of your presentation. If you don't, they will tune you out and your advocacy message will fall on deaf ears.

In my example, the threshold is contained in the opening sentence "continue to provide a full educational experience". What school board member, superintendent, or parent would not want to see their children provided with a full educational experience? My next sentence expands on this theme and continues to get the audience over the threshold of why they should care.

"The recent decision to eliminate elementary school physical education by certified physical education professionals, and replace structured classes with recess-style physical activity conducted by non-educators, amounts to a decrease in educational time and learning experiences for your children. Removing educational time from the school day and replacing it with activities that have little or no educational value sets a bad precedent."

STEP SIX: Reinforce your message and provide solutions.
Now that you have your audience's attention, and they care about or at least are intrigued about what you have to say, you are now ready to fill in your message by adding reinforcements and presenting solutions to problems. This section is often easier to write as your thoughts are already clarified by the process of creating a great opening sentence and threshold.

The reinforcement can be any statistics, research, anecdotes, or clarification that supports your message. You only need one or two really good ones. In my example, I educate the audience on the difference between physical education and physical activity.

"With heightened attention on childhood obesity prevention efforts, there seems to be some confusion between the terms "physical education" and "physical activity." Physical activity is just one part of physical education and school physical education programs offer the best opportunity to provide physical activity to all children and to teach them the skills and knowledge needed to establish and sustain an active lifestyle."

We also need to present a solution to a problem, in this case of children losing part of their educational experience. In my example, I'd want to describe specific things that will be lost if the present course of action is adhered to such as the following:

"When physical education is replaced by physical activity you remove the educational component from that time and the following educational opportunities will be lost to your students."

Increased fitness for all students will be lost. Recess-style physical activity where improvement and participation are left to chance will not provide the following components that are part of a physical education program:

• Pre- and post-fitness testing and goal setting for all students.
• Developmentally appropriate programs that ensure that students have a chance to reach their goals and improve their fitness.

In addition, studies have shown a strong positive relationship between physical fitness, physical activity, and academic achievement. Students who are physically fit are more likely to do well on state standardized tests, have better school attendance records, and have fewer disciplinary referrals. The benefits of quality physical education are not something our district should be leaving to chance in a recess style program.

The solution is contained in the statement of what will be lost: Keep comprehensive physical education taught by certified physical education teachers and you will continue to have increased fitness and academic achievement for all students.

Your reinforcements and solutions will set you up for the finale that includes restating your message and call to action.

STEP SEVEN: Write your finale
You are now set up for your finale. It's essential you make clear that you are asking for something to happen otherwise you will simply be thanked and your listeners will continue on to another topic. The close of your message should contain a restatement of the main message and a clear call to action telling the audience exactly what you want them to do.

"For the physical and mental health of our children, I am here today to ask you to continue to provide a full education to the students of __________ school district by continuing to provide regularly scheduled, quality physical education classes taught by certified physical education professionals."

STEP EIGHT: Practice delivering your message to a live audience
This step is often ignored but it is vital preparation to delivering an outstanding presentation of your message. You need to practice and own your message so that you don't need to read it word for word. You will be a far more convincing presenter if you can deliver your message while making eye contact with your audience and not having to refer to notes. The only way to do this is practice.

STEP NINE: Repeat steps one through eight for each new advocacy message and improve and refine your present message
I've found that I am constantly making small changes in my advocacy message based on the audience or my last experience delivering the message. A good exercise to test your skill is to write out your advocacy message, have someone read it, and then have them try to identify your main message, the threshold, and the intended action. If you would like to use me for this exercise I would be pleased to read your advocacy message. You can email me your advocacy message at pwclinton@comcast.net.

This is the last of a three-part series of articles on advocacy. To further enhance your advocacy skills consider attending Paul’s advocacy session that will be available at the AAHPERD National Conference in St. Louis on April 3rd, Advocacy: Crafting Your Message.

Paul Clinton teaches Physical Education at Lakewood High School in Washington State. You can contact Paul at: pclinton@lwsd.wednet.edu.

¹ These rules were adapted from materials provided by the Center for the Strengthening of the Teaching Profession during an intensive full-day advocacy training session.

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