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Doug D.C. Doug Hodum, a high school science teacher from Farmington was one of only 13 STEM educators from across the nation to be selected as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator. The fellowship allowed Hodum to participate in 11�month fellowship in Washington, D.C. The fellows chosen work within the offices of three sponsoring agencies and four Congressional Offices. The fellows applied their extensive knowledge and classroom experiences to national education program and/or education policy efforts. Hodum shared his thoughts from his time in Washington DC after he returned home with a renewed passion for teaching, ready to make significant contributions to his school and district.
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y experience as an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow (AEF) was both fascinating and humbling for me professionally and personally. The year unfolded in a much unexpected way, though I entered the experience in a great haze of unknown. First of all, the AEF Fellowship is for K-12 STEM teachers across the US to work either on Capitol Hill or in executive branch offices, such as NASA, NSF or the US Department of Energy. The application is due in November, with semifinalists interviewing in DC with interested offices in February and the formal invitation coming in March. I pursued this experience because I thought it would broaden my horizons as an educator and a teacher leader. I wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone and experience something completely different from what I do everyday as an educator. For the past several years, I have focused much of my professional development work in advocating for teacher voice to be elevated above the typical din of educational policy debates. I have trained teachers to insert their voices into conversations that affect our students and can change our practice. We, the teachers, are practitioners who know what it is like in our classrooms. This fellowship allowed me to take my experiences to the policy makers and contribute in a small way to those conversations.
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Maine Educator • October 2017
From taking meetings with constituents to lobbyists to other staffers, I found that I had a lot to learn about politics and how things work or do not work. The tone of political conversations changed during my time in DC from one where collaboration could be helpful to one where cooperation was largely disdained. The conservatives had no reason to work together as they controlled the government. The liberals did not want to collaborate as that would be an endorsement, either implicit or explicit, of any given conservative agenda item. That was difficult to see, as common ground can often be found when people are solutions based, even if the foundational ideas are not the same. When it comes to education, though, everyone wants to do what they believe is right for kids. I may not agree with the perspective others have, but I do believe no one wants to do the wrong thing for students.
The importance of coffee and conversations I had many coffee dates in the Dunkin' Donuts in the basement of the Longworth House Office Building. This is how networks are built and how I began to create a list of possible people to contact if and when I would need things over the next 11 months working for Mr. Honda. Staffers do drink a lot of coffee!
