Membership for the
Future
by Kent Williamson, NCTE Executive
Director
May 2007 Council-Grams
What will an ideal membership experience be like for NCTE
members next year? Five years from now? Fifteen years from now? These questions
stretch our imagination, and drive innovation. They lie at the foundation of
inquiries launched by the NCTE Executive Committee in recent years that have led
to far-reaching motions describing a 2020
Vision for the Council, core professional development principles, and a
statement describing how NCTE
serves the public interest. These statements are both visionary and
practical, sketching a future where members can rely upon the Council to not
only support them at every career stage, but to also give them a means of
sharing their knowledge, thereby earning respect and credit for their
contributions as a professional educator who consistently enriches student
learning.
During the year ahead, it is imperative that NCTE take the next
steps in translating its principles of teacher learning through membership into
an action plan. These plans are already taking shape, as we work towards a
comprehensive redesign of the NCTE website, launch our new professional
development plans (NCTE Pathway to Advance Adolescent Literacy and NCTE
Pathway to Advance English Language Learners), and introduce a new
publication imprint; all of these changes will culminate in a proposal for new
membership service structures.
To make sense of these impending changes, it’s helpful to
examine recent literature about what professionals expect from membership, what
we know about career-long teacher learning, and the power of emerging social
networks. Here’s a summary of some of the profound changes at play:
- Successful associations understand that members are not mere
customers or even constituents to be served. The knowledge, skill, and
goodwill of members is THE product of dynamic, influential
associations. Unlike publishers who create products for a market, or
policy groups who try to line up support for a position or platform, NCTE’s
challenge is to offer invitations and tools to a community of practitioners so
that they can share what they know dynamically -- as they are teaching and
learning.
- Quality in a professional community is maintained through peer
review. Facilitating peer review for varied sources of “content” -- ranging from
traditional journal articles, book manuscripts, and convention proposals, to
lesson plans, study group findings, and videos of teacher practice -- is a
challenge NCTE must meet.
- First-year teachers have different needs than advanced
teacher-scholars. Elementary teachers have different interests than college
administrators. NCTE seeks to serve them all, but can only be effective if we
make it easy to sort the resources, networking communities, and experiences
available to members.
- It is not enough to simply celebrate diversity. We must be
intentional in developing strategies for including teachers of all ethnicities,
beliefs, and orientations in every significant Council enterprise. That means
not merely welcoming those who come to a meeting or join the Council, but going
to where teachers with diverse needs work and study and providing opportunities
to participate.
- Educators who take time to participate in our membership
community deserve professional credit. NCTE must help them document their
contributions and learning experiences so they can advance and earn the
professional respect they deserve.
- We cannot grow as a community if teacher discretion and methods
are artificially constrained by misdirected public policies. Legislators need to
hear from members with direct experience about which policies promote and
support effective teaching and assessment strategies, and which do not. We can
have compelling guidelines and positions, but we must also build personal
relationships with policymakers if we are to be effective in shaping laws and
regulations.
The tools and structures that will support these changes will be
introduced over the next 12 to 24 months. Here are some reference links
describing resources, studies, and programs that are helping to shape the future
of NCTE membership services. I welcome your thoughts and comments on what the
NCTE membership experience of tomorrow should be; please contact me at .
On the Future of Voluntary
Membership
Articles from
Robert Putnam, director of the Saguaro Seminar on Civic Engagement in
America
From the American Society of Association Executives, an article
by Phillip Lester, "Job #1: A Relentless Focus on Providing Value to
Members"
On Frameworks for Teacher Learning/Student
Success
National Staff Development
Council’s Standards for Staff Development
The
Writing and School Reform Report from the National Commission on
Writing
WestEd’s Strategic
Literacy Initiative
The Partnership for 21st Century Skills Learning
Framework and NCTE’s English Language Arts ICT Literacy
Map
Also of interest
TeacherTube: a video collection of teacher
practices
Thinkfinity.org and ReadWriteThink.org: online collections of free,
peer-reviewed lesson plans and student resources
CommonGround Publishing: a new approach to scholarly
publishing
Writing in Digital Environments Lab at Michigan State
University: a program that examines social networking in digital
environments and offers insights on web site design
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