| Manuals
and Guides: Youth
Making
the Rules
A Public Achievement Guidebook
for
Young People Who Intend to Make a Difference, continued
by Melissa
Bass, in collaboration with Harry Boyte, Tim Sheldon, Walter Enloe,
Jamie Martinez, Ginger Mitchell, Rachel Boyte-Evans, Project Public
Life, and The Center for Democracy and Citizenship.
Manual
Index
Introduction:
How To Use This Workbook
Chapter One: The Framework
Chapter Two: Discovering Your Self-Interest
Chapter Three: Stepping into Public Life
Chapter Four: Encountering Diversity
Chapter Five: Building Power
Chapter Six: Taking Action
Resources
Contents
The Lesson: Do-It-Yourself Politics
Public Skills: Fact Finding
Public Skills: Evaluating
Strategies
Your Story
Chapter
Six: Taking Action
Chapter Six: Taking
Action Taking action means jumping in and tackling real, live
issues. You need to try out your strategies, find out the facts,
and negotiate with others. The story is yours to create.
See the glossary
at the back of this book for definitions of words related to practicing
citizen politics.
The
Lesson: Do-It-Yourself Politics
Chances are good that
when you were a kid, you were told not to touch stovetops because
they're hot. Chances are just as good that you understood the message
a lot better after you got burned. There's just no substitute for
learning firsthand.
When you learn from
experience, you learn both about the outside world and about who
you are. Going back to the burned fingers example, not only did
you learn that stoves can be dangerous, but you learned under
what circumstances you in particular react to pain.
Using another example,
jumping into public life is a lot like stepping onto a soccer
field. There's pressure, and you might feel as if there's a lot
that depends on what you do. Yet it's only with practice that
you can become good at setting up strategies with your teammates
even as the game is going on all around you—there's
no substitute for the real thing. In an intense game, you also
come to appreciate how much power there is in coordinating your
actions with the rest of the team's. You get used to it, and you
get better at predicting what your actions will accomplish.
After a game, a team
usually analyzes its own actions and those of its opponents, either
formally or informally. It's a way of translating the experience
of the past hours into future games, and it's the reason a team
that has played together before isn't starting from scratch and
gets better and better. The same is true of public life. Evaluating
strategies and action—both
your own and others'—is
active remembering with a purpose. It's a political act because
it takes the mystery out of the power that other people have and
boils it back down to relationships.
You saw in the chapter
on self-interest how knowledge of what you believe leads you to
public life. You saw in the chapter on public and diversity how
much you learn when you encounter other people and what they believe,
and how they have ideas that are sometimes either in conflict
or agreement with yours. And you saw in the chapter on power that
it is when you start acting on what you want that you have to
manage your relationships with others and figure out how to work
effectively with a diversity of ideas, values, and people to get
the job done.
What you learn along
each step of public life brings you full circle. Remember the
citizen politics model at the beginning the book? (It's on page
15). Participating in public life changes you. By developing skills
that can help you look back and see how far you've come, you can
develop a sense of ownership over your own knowledge. You can
discover the dignity of knowing your own story well enough to
keep telling it, revising it and clarifying it.
Hang
on a sec!
Does this description
match what you've read in the rest of this workbook?
Public
Skill: Fact Finding
Meeting with and talking
to other people about recycling really helped a lot and added more
dimensions to our problem.
- Ramsey
Jr. High Public Achievement team member
One of the most important
steps your team can take is to go outside your team to gather
the knowledge and information you don't have. The process of fact
finding often starts through conducting interviews with the people
you put on your power map (see Chapter Five: "Building Power").
Interviewing for
information is helpful for a number of reasons. It:
- shows you what
you know, and what you don't;
- can get you the
information that you need;
- lets you know what
other people think about your team's issue;
- often leads to
other resources for finding information; and
- teaches the importance
of accountability.
Your team may be
nervous about going out into the world and talking to new people.
That's normal. But having clear expectations and being prepared
for the interview can make it an empowering experience. To get
the most out of it, follow these tips.
Tips
for Informational Interviewing
Identify
your needs: Who do you need to talk to? What do you
need to know?
Don't
make demands: Don't
approach an interview with the idea of solving your problem—it
will put the person on the defensive. Just ask for the information
you need.
Role
play: Before you
meet with someone, practice. Have your coach or another team member
play the part of the interviewee. What questions do you think
he or she will have?
Make
appointments: Don't expect to just walk into someone's
office. Set up an appointment—and
keep it!
Use
the buddy system: Pair
up for the interviews, but don't bring a crowd. You don't want
to be intimidated, and you don't want to intimidate anyone else!
Share:
Take notes and summarize the information you gain to share
with your team.
Evaluate:
What went well? What didn't? What do you need to do next?
Remember that people
aren't your only resources. Calling a local government office
or visiting the library are just two other ways of getting the
information you need.
Public
Skill: Evaluating Strategies
So you and your team
have taken the leap into public life by moving outside your team
and taking action. Now what? If you are going to learn from your
experience, you've got to critically evaluate what you've done.
Sample Questions
for Evaluating Strategies
What did we set out
to accomplish? What did we accomplish?
What parts of our
strategy or action worked well? What went as planned? Were there
any pleasant surprises? How can we build on our successes?
What parts of our
strategy or action didn't work well? What went wrong? What do
we need to change to meet these challenges?
What did we learn
by taking this action? How can we use this in the future?
Your
Story
You've read
about how citizen politics has helped other people make a difference.
Now it's up to you. Keep working. Organize your team. Identify
an issue that is important to the group and define a problem that
you would like to solve. Who are the important players? What do
you need to do? How will you get it done? What happened? Why?
Go back and
review sections of this book as you take action. Does it change
what you think about what you've read? Are some parts more useful
than others? Did some stuff turn out to be wrong? Write to us
and let us know!
Manual
Index
Introduction:
How To Use This Workbook
Chapter One: The Framework
Chapter Two: Discovering Your Self-Interest
Chapter Three: Stepping into Public Life
Chapter Four: Encountering Diversity
Chapter Five: Building Power
Chapter Six: Taking Action
Resources
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