An example of effective advocacy (crossing fingers!)

Advocacy seems to be the buzzword of the year. With a new superintendent in my district, I decided I should be doing some targeted advocacy of my own. I knew my superintendent liked technology, and he has said he learns visually, so I decided I’d work with the other librarians in my district to create a short video about what we do.

I’d been hearing raves about Animoto, so I signed up for an educator’s account. This took a while, but was worth it since it’s so easy to use. I uploaded pictures from all of our libraries, gathered statistics and some examples, and put it all together into a simple, punchy promo.

We invited the new superintendent to one of our monthly meetings and started off by showing him the video. He loved it and asked to put it up on the district website and to share it on the city’s cable network. After the video we had a lengthy, useful conversation about the district and our role in it. We even got down into nitty gritty money details. Of course nothing in this economy is guaranteed, but this seems to have been a simple, effective way to open up dialogue.