Capitol Connections: Seeing the bigger picture

A U.S. Capitol snapshot reminds Sen. Jo Anna Dossett why understanding other perspectives matters

The photograph still makes Sen. Jo Anna Dossett smile.

Taken on the steps of the U.S. Capitol during the 1998 Electric Cooperative Youth Tour, it’s the kind of panoramic picture that required a photographer, specialized equipment and a little creativity. As the camera swept across the group, the student standing on one end ducked down, ran behind all the delegates and appeared on the opposite side of the image.

“It was so cool,” Dossett said. “Somebody, not me, got to show up twice.”

Nearly three decades later, that picture remains one of her strongest memories from Youth Tour. Not because of the Capitol dome in the background or the significance of standing in the nation’s capital, but because of the feeling of being part of something much bigger than herself.

“You don’t often get to travel in a group that large,” she said. “I had never been that far away from my parents before.”

The trip came at a time when the Tulsa teenager was certain about one thing: she knew exactly what she did not want to become.

Both of her parents spent their careers in education. Her mother taught for 30 years. Her father worked in teaching and administration for more than 40.

“I loved my parents, and I was a good kid, but I was never going to do what they did,” Dossett said with a laugh. “I was firmly, heels dug in, that I was never going to be a teacher.”

Life had other plans.

She served in the Peace Corps, spent more than 15 years in the classroom and eventually found herself in another role she never imagined as a teenager: elected official.

“If you had told me then that I would become a teacher and then a state senator, I would have been shocked,” she said. “Being an elected official wasn’t even in the realm of things. I didn’t know anyone who did that.”

With the benefit of hindsight, the thread connecting those chapters is clear.

“Teaching is a service,” she said. “Nobody commits to a career like that because they’re trying to advance themselves. You’re trying to make the world better.”

She credits her parents for modeling a life centered on something larger than personal ambition.

“Others before self,” she said.

That sense of service has followed her from classroom to classroom, across continents and now to the Oklahoma Senate. But it has also taught her humility.

Dossett says some of her most important lessons came during her time in the Peace Corps, where she couldn’t speak the local language and quickly learned that expertise can be overrated.

“You should never walk into a room thinking you’re the expert,” she said.

She carries that philosophy into public office.

“I can never assume I know the answer,” she said. “The answer has to come from my constituents.”

She also welcomes the limits of her own experiences. Having spent much of her professional life in public service, Dossett is intentional about listening to perspectives outside her background, particularly those from the private sector.

“It’s my job to represent 84,000 people,” she said. “I have to keep in mind constantly that you can’t walk into the Senate as a teacher and think that’s the only information you rely on.”

Listening, she believes, is one of the most important responsibilities of the job.

So is maintaining hope.

At a time when political headlines often focus on conflict and division, Dossett says what keeps her optimistic rarely makes the news.

“I know there are many meaningful things that don’t make for catchy headlines,” she said. “Most people in this line of work are here to do small, incremental good things for the people they serve.”

Those daily efforts, she said, are what sustain her.

As she reflects on Youth Tour, Dossett sees another lesson that has become increasingly important in her work as a legislator.

Growing up in the Tulsa metro area, she had little interaction with people from many of Oklahoma’s rural communities.

“I had never met someone from the Panhandle before,” she said. “I had never met someone from southwest or southeast Oklahoma.”

Youth Tour changed that.

For the first time, she spent a week side by side with fellow Oklahomans whose lives looked very different from her own. The experience broadened her understanding of her state and, in many ways, prepared her for the work she does today.

“The rural caucus is large,” she said. “It’s very important to understand where they’re coming from.”

In the Senate, she said, good ideas rarely succeed if they benefit only one community. They must resonate across Oklahoma.

“It’s important to represent your district,” she said. “But it’s also important to take a broader view and a longer view — what’s good for the entire state.”

Perhaps that’s the enduring lesson of that old panoramic photograph.

A group of teenagers from every corner of Oklahoma, gathered on the steps of the Capitol, learning that their differences matter and so does finding common ground.