By Kristin

CSTP turns ten this year. 

Ten years ago I was teaching at Ingraham High School in north Seattle, pregnant with my first child, and somewhere down in Tacoma Jeanne Harmon thought it would be great if teachers were given the tools they needed to be more involved with creating the education policies that affect them and their students.

I don't know when I first took advantage of CSTP.  I can't remember if applying to write for this blog came first, or if I attended a teacher leadership training through CSTP and then learned about the blogging opportunity, but this is what I do remember about that first interaction: we met at a beautiful retreat center in Seattle.  It felt luxurious.  It felt really good to be sitting in a room with grown up tables and chairs, with windows that looked out onto a fountain instead of in a drafty cafeteria.  For lunch we went to the retreat center's cafe and ate delicious food in a beautiful room, and I thought, "This is what happens when teachers take care of teachers." 

The trainings that followed that first one - everything from how to engage in the legislative process to how to decode our state's new evaluation system – honored us as professionals just as much as the thoughtful settings did.  When teachers are respected as professionals, the whole thing shifts.  I attend professional development in my district where I sit in a messy room and have someone read a bad powerpoint to me.  I attend trainings where I'm expected to think and be treated like a 6th grader and have to role play a writing lesson.  It's insulting.  CSTP's trainings – every one – have been meaningful, respectful,  gorgeously paced, and engaging. 

When CSTP encourages and trains teachers to be advocates for policy it doesn't dictate which policies should be advocated for, and this is a crucial and valuable difference between CSTP and other teacher organizations like SEE or TU or our education associations.  All of those groups also empower teachers, but if you are a part of them you are expected to support whatever policy they are fighting for, whether it's eliminating state testing as part of a teacher's evaluation or adding it, endorsing charters or fighting them, protecting tenure or eliminating it.  True, those policies are chosen democratically, but when an organization has an agenda it can feel a little constrictive.  CSTP's goal is to improve education by empowering teachers and improving instructional practice. 

CSTP is the little engine that could. Maintaining an independent stance has meant less funding, because big funding follows specific policy, like charters or merit pay, but I think CSTP's decision to focus on teacher voice instead of a specific policy outcome is a smart thing.  It means we'll have a teacher base empowered to advocate for students and communities regardless of what the current policy darling is.

CSTP thinks the simple fact you're a teacher means you can be trusted to speak up for something worthwhile and that's a beautiful, and unusual, thing.  By the end of this year, CSTP would love to hit 1,000 likes on Facebook.  Want to help us?