National board-certified special education teacher Lauren Jewett ran for her local school board in 2022 and the state school board in 2023. Those experiences brought to light some things that could help other educators running for office. She recently talked about it with Larry Jacobs on the Education Talk Radio podcast.
Jewett lives in Jefferson Parish, part of the greater New Orleans area, and teaches in Orleans Parish. As the DSCC Member Elect for District 78, she also represents Metairie and Kenner at the state level, as well as Jefferson Parish at the parish level.
After 12 years in her current role, Jewett will be part of the special education team at a new school in the fall — a charter school run by the District. Leah Chase School is named after renowned chef Leah Chase, the “Queen of Creole Cuisine” whose family still runs the well-known New Orleans restaurant Dooky Chase. Civil Rights activists including Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall often met at Dooky Chase’s in the 1960s because it served as a safe place for discussions about the movement.
“We have a lot of work to do, particularly around equity.”
This may be the understatement of the year, but there seems to be a lot of contentiousness around politics and teaching these days, and educators are often put in incredibly difficult situations. Why would a teacher want to get involved in something that can be so messy and unpleasant?
“It’s important as an educator and as a teacher to at least be informed about what’s happening, on a local and state level, with policies and bills that are being proposed, because those things impact us in the classroom,” she said, adding that educators are often so busy that they aren’t in the room or being engaged when bills are policies are crafted.
“If they get passed, we have to deal with the implementation. And sometimes something that looks good on paper falls apart when it has to be implemented or in practice because our voices were missing from the process.”
This is why Jewett believes that the role of an educator is intricately connected to policy and advocacy. Her involvement in that realm began when she worked on the council of her local Teacher’s Union. Originally from Rochester, New York, she was also getting acquainted with the region and its people at the time — and the more she did in the community, the more people told her she should run for office.
Then Covid happened
The pandemic created a lot of back-and-forth between virtual and in-person learning, and the elementary schools in the area went back sooner than some of the middle school and high schools. At the same time, new policies were coming down the pipeline and teachers were, as they were everywhere, overwhelmed.
Jewett started to publicly advocate for her colleagues and students. She did news interviews on Zoom, both from her house and from her classroom, answering questions about reopening plans, masking policies, and what teachers were thinking and feeling in the midst of all the change. And this era, as chaotic as it was, helped to hone Jewett’s advocacy and leadership skills, preparing her for what would come next.
Running for School Board
The local school board had a vacancy, and Jewett and eight other people applied for it. This was her first time running for any office and she didn’t win, but the experience gave her “the itch” to keep going.
“I launched my campaign during Teacher Appreciation Week in 2022. And I just said that if we appreciated teachers, we would be electing more educators into office — or we would be supporting more educators to see themselves as worthy contenders and candidates,” she said. “I had a very grassroots, kind of low-budget campaign, but I know teachers are resourceful. We know how to do a lot with little. And I made sure I planned everything. I ran all my own social media. My aunt helped me with things I couldn’t do during the school day. She made phone calls and helped with entering in my data for my campaign reports. I think we’re very good at being flexible, thinking on our feet, and that helped a lot.”
Indeed, teachers spend their careers having conversations, building trust and communicating inspiring messages. When they run for office, they start with much of the skillset they need to win, and a lot of that is about helping people understand the platforms. Most educators have also practiced something else that’s invaluable for any campaign: patience.
A lot of the work is education
Voters aren’t aware of everything that’s going on and a candidate can help communicate even the basics, like the dates of an election. During door-knocking, Jewett came across people who weren’t even aware that school board candidates would be on the ballot. Her expertise as a teacher came in handy as she gave people the information they needed to get out and vote.
“Educators have a strong skillset because we’re already delivering content all the time, and we know how to do it in a way that’s accessible to all different people. Sometimes people who are giving out that information don’t think with the mind of an educator and don’t think, okay, if I’m putting this information out, maybe I need to have a visual, or maybe I need to have a description if it’s on social media, to be more accessible to people. They’re not thinking about all those things all the time, but I’m thinking about that because I’m looking at it through my educator brain.”
Finding common ground
As Jewett campaigned door-to-door, she met many people who were particularly encouraged to see a special education teacher running for the school board seat. A lot of them shared that a family member had a disability or that a family member was a teacher, and many had a story that connected with what she was talking about on the campaign trail.
She also encountered voters who didn’t have school-aged children, and she communicated why education is impactful for them, because we want to all kids to be well educated, and education intersects with so many other areas.
A large number of people in the New Orleans area send their kids to parochial or private schools rather than public schools. With them she talked about how they are still taxpayers who help fund public schools and keep them strong. Public education is a public good, she said, and everyone is a part of that.
Other voters had strong opinions based on things they had seen on the news — the culture war issues. When Jewett spoke to them, she emphasized her platform as an educator and shared a bit about what it’s like to be in the classroom. “Some of these things that they were bringing up that they saw on the news, while these were issues, they were not the issues that we were particularly facing as educators,” she said.
Educators need to be paid more equitably and fairly. Working conditions in some schools need to be better. The mental health of students needs to be addressed. Schools need to be properly staffed — not just with teachers but with bus drivers, nurses, librarians and other support staff. When she brought the conversation back to those things, many were more receptive. Not all, but many. It wasn’t easy and it was often uncomfortable, but Jewett made those conversations happen.
“That was, to me,” she said, “the importance of knocking on the doors.”
