Make Connections Locally

Teaching gives you a superpower of opening doors that might otherwise be shut. As teachers, we can call the town hall, the local dump or a museum and ask for professionals to donate their time and expertise to our classrooms … for free! When we teach like an organizer, we see this as an opportunity not only to have our classes benefit from the knowledge and experience of professionals, but it is also a chance to add to the scalability of change efforts being led by the students we work alongside. Here, we apply the lessons from the previous chapter to the community at large as we bring more people into the fold—an effort that should be looked at through the idea of sustainability and “deep organizing” to prevent burnout, fatigue or overreliance on any individual or organization.