A Course for the Future

A Course for the Future By Tim Walker & Giovanna Bechard

“Students should see their teachers as someone who cares about their academic success and their personal growth,” Jahana Hayes the National Teacher of the Year told a group of 8,000 educators, including 34 from Maine who participated in the National Education Association Representative Assembly (NEA RA) in Washington D.C. in July. The NEA RA is the highest decision-making body within the over 3 million-member NEA. Members from across the nation gather to set the course for the Association nationwide while learning more about their profession, their union and those who belong.

For first time Maine delegate John Messier, the NEA RA as an experience was “almost overwhelming. To be on the floor with thousands of fellow educators deciding on the directions of the NEA was so empowering. I also went to the Human and Civil Rights award dinner. I am so proud of the inspiring work of my colleagues that my Union encourages and recognizes,” said Messier of his time in D.C. The Union also recognizes the changing face of its members. More than 2 million new educators will be entering the workforce over the next five years alone. In his address to the RA, NEA Executive Director John Stocks warned the delegates that the new generation of educators may not necessarily understand students. “We must become relevant to them, to help them meet the changing needs of their students…to help them be successful educators, and to tap into their idealism,” Stocks said. “And we must act with urgency.”

These new educators tend to look to the colleagues for support, and that’s all of you, Stocks told the delegates. But here’s the catch: they probably don’t know that their colleagues are the union.

Engaging this new generation, Stocks said, “is a simple act totally within our control.”

“That is our responsibility to the millions of students and educators who need us to give them a greater voice. And that is our legacy to the new educators coming of age who will someday soon fill this great hall,

how vital their Association can and will be to them and their take up the gavel, champion the cause…and make their own history.”