Membership Chair
Hello, Members, old and new. Hope your summer made you go “WhoooooHooooo” at least once a week, if not daily.
The Membership Committee is, for this newsletter, about Communication—something we all are probably thinking about right now. Communication, as in “How do I get a bigger budget from my Administration?” , or “How will I handle that student who failed but wants back into my class?”, or “How will I handle those students and parents who want to know why they weren’t cast in the first show?”
Well, I don’t have the perfect answers to those questions, but I would like to communicate with you about a few things the Membership Committee is looking to do for you this year.
Our goals are easy to state, but needing your input to achieve. Please, if you have a few minutes while sitting at your computer, drop me a line about your ideas for this committee. Goals are as follows:
- To recruit new members;
- To retain our members;
- To get and keep our members active, educated, and, well, communicating with us and with each other.
So here’s what we would like to know:
Recruitment: How can we reach new members? Whether new to the profession or in it for a while but not a TETA member, how can we begin to find new people?
Retention: How do we keep retirees involved? How do we keep those members who have been to “all” the workshops at conventions and “cannot find anything new” to go to? What advice about getting money to go to the conventions?
Communication: What would you like to see at conventions? What can we do for you the rest of the year? What programming did you like at the last convention you went to? Did you do the evaluation last January and/or in July?
We would like to ask you to forward this to any new teachers at your school, in your Districts, in your kids’ schools, in your neighborhood or local Starbucks (wherever you find them!) and let us communicate with them, please. We are hoping to get information to your principals about TETA—what we offer to you and to your students—and to communicate with them about the importance of Fine Arts as “Core” curriculum.
We are still looking for a few new committee members. We need a retired teacher, and would like to get a few of you who teach along the Texas perimeters (we have a few already from central Texas). If you are interested, please contact me.
And a quick piece of advice: pay your dues for TETA when you register (for either January or for the Summer Conference)—it is easier for you and for us to keep up with.
The FaceBook pages seem to be a fantastic way for many of you to communicate—I love reading what y’all write and what you ask—thanks to all of you who ask and all of you who answer.
Hoping you share this with someone—and/or communicate with me about the committee.
Live, Love, Laugh, and Learn
Shawn B. Saunders, Membership Committee
shawn.saunders@nisd.net or sbrown3348@yahoo.com