Laura McCarty: The Power of Personal Stories

Laura once thought she could change the world as a lawyer. But after two weeks in law school, she realized that she didn’t want to spend her life practicing law. “Still, I felt committed to finish my law degree before finding a field that held more meaning for me,” Laura recalls. And she found it when she began to work as a substitute teacher in a special education class. “I fell in love with the field and went back to school to get a master’s degree in K-12 special education. I ended up as a teacher in an early childhood special education classroom for 14 years,” Laura says. “And the experience made me keenly aware that early childhood education was where I could do the most to serve children and families. Still, I never thought I had the power to make change beyond my classroom walls.”

Now she’s doing that as president of the Northern Virginia Association for the Education of Young Children (NVAEYC). Laura is also the founder and CEO and of the McCarty Consulting Group, which helps support grassroots advocacy for the early childhood profession. And she brings a passion for equity in early learning to her current efforts since she also spent three years as a district-level administrator for Washington, DC, public schools. “I supported 12 underfunded schools, whose students had a history of failing test scores. And this underperformance called for the need for systems change. So, I went into the schools and helped the staff and administration to think about the broader structures that held the students back, reimagine what education should look like and build multi-tiered systems of support for the students and staff.”

This role gave Laura the chance to engage in a lot of collaboration to promote equity in early learning at DC public schools, but she still wanted to make an even broader impact, so five years ago, she joined the Advocacy Leadership Training Program (ALTP) at NVAEYC. The ALTP prepares early childhood professionals to skillfully advocate and lead advocacy efforts, something Laura didn’t realize she had the power to do. “I always knew I could voice my concerns in my school, but it never occurred to me that I could call a member of Congress and say you should listen to me because I’m an expert in the early education field. So, signing up for the advocacy course helped me recognize my expertise and the power that it brings.”

Laura’s legal training has helped shaped her role in the advocacy sphere, as she explains. “Understanding the legal aspects of the education process gave me a unique perspective to support students and families. But my background as an educator was also important. I knew how to stand up in front of a courtroom, but like many people, I put our elected officials on a pedestal and thought they had a special omniscience. But they’re just like everybody else. They’re not experts in everything and many haven’t been in an early childhood classroom since they were young. They rely on other folks to tell them what’s going on, and as educators, we are the experts in our field,” Laura insists. “We must be the ones to tell lawmakers our stories, so they make policies that reflect the real needs of the early learning field.”

Attending the ALTP gave Laura the courage to do that, as she explains. “When I attended the program, I realized I have a community of people who can mentor me, and that matters because so much of advocacy is finding other people who can be there with you and show you the ropes. That’s the grassroots advocacy space that I’m in now,” Laura says. And she now leads the ALTP that got her started.

“I’ve expanded it from the very small cohort that it was when I attended,” Laura says. “I’ve built it into a structured program with a distinct curriculum and resources. We take 10 selected applicants for each six-week training session, teach them about the Virginia state legislative process, and help them learn to craft their stories. It culminates with everyone going to the annual NAEYC Public Policy Forum and making visits to their lawmakers on Capitol Hill.”

Laura is an expert on how to get a message across to lawmakers, and “it’s not rocket science,” as she points out. “What matters is knowing what to say in an email and knowing how to speak in a meeting. You can’t just walk into a lawmaker’s office and spew out information. You must be concise, cohesive and coherent. You have to develop your elevator pitch, so to speak, and present your personal story.”

Laura has passed on this message to the wide range of people who’ve attended the ALTP. “We’ve had family members,” she says. “We’ve had business owners since they depend on child care for their employees to come to work. We’re also working to expand the program beyond Northern Virginia and open it up to anyone who has a personal stake in learning how to advocate for quality early learning.”

And the people who’ve responded include a young woman named Sarah who Laura met at a rally. “She’s a special education teacher in the Virginia public school system, and she reached out to me because she wanted to become more involved in the advocacy space. So, we talked a few times, she attended the ALTP and I connected her to several people who could support her,” Laura recalls. “Since then, she’s been to the state capitol of Virginia and built relationships with the delegates who represent her. She’s also invited elected officials into her classroom to see what an early childhood setting is like, so they’ll draw implications for policy and practice. She’s become a strong voice for the needs of special education and the students and families she supports.”

But Sarah lacked confidence when she ran into Laura at that rally. “When we first met,” Laura recalls, “Sarah expressed many of the concerns I had as a classroom teacher. She wondered whether what she had to say was important. Who would listen to her story? And would it make a difference?”

Laura insists that it does to the students she teaches as an adjunct professor at Northern Virginia Community College or NOVA. “I show the students how to teach math to young children,” Laura explains. And she also brings her passion for equity in early learning to the college, where students earn associate degrees accredited by NAEYC. “Part of the NAEYC professional standards is to advocate for your profession,” Laura says, “so I encourage my students to get involved in the progress of our field and speak out for what our industry needs. I don’t want them to spend 14 years in a classroom, like me, before they realize that their story has power.” And Laura has her own powerful story to share as she speaks out for more access to quality child care, along with more pay and recognition for the educators who provide it.

“I became pregnant at 16 and had to drop out of school,” Laura recalls. “But I knew I had to get an education, so I went back to get my high school diploma. It wasn’t easy since I had also left home, so I put myself on a wait list to get a subsidy for child care. I worked two or three jobs to get through high school and two bachelor’s degrees while I was still waiting for child care. I had no choice but to take my daughter with me to school and work for the first five years of her life. And by the time I finally came up on the wait list, my daughter was in school, so I no longer needed child care. Then, I went on to put myself through law school, which was really hard, and now my daughter is 30 years old.”

Yet we are still having the same conversation about funding for child care, to Laura’s distress. And she makes this point when she talks to state and federal officials. “I usually close the conversation by sharing my story,” Laura says. “No one should have to struggle the way I did, and that’s why I’m doing what I do today. I’m committed to growing the community of advocates for the early childhood sector, which is a personal issue for me since the lack of access to quality child care made an impact on me.”

Laura managed to succeed in overcoming all the roadblocks she faced. And despite all that she has achieved, she considers her greatest success to be finding her voice and coming to see the power of her story. As she urges other educators to speak out, she draws inspiration from something Eleanor Roosevelt said: “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” So, Laura wants educators to realize that they are the experts, and no one has to give them permission to make a difference in our field. “Together,” she says, “we can build a strong community of people with the power to produce change.”