Affiliate Centennial Project

Soon NCTE will mark its Centennial, 100 years of leadership in literacy education.  While 2011 is NCTE’s birthday year, plans and activities are currently underway to mark the organization’s vital place in literacy education in American and to foster more public awareness of issues in literacy education.

Here are ways your Affiliate can celebrate: 

• Make an Honor Roll of Affiliate Members
• Publicize Affiliate Milestones
• Publish a New or Updated Literary Map
• Contribute Then & Now Pieces

Honor Roll of Affiliate Members
As we approach 2011, one project (of four possibilities) affiliates may want to pursue is creating and publicizing an Honor Roll of Affiliate Members which can be placed on the NCTE website and also publicized and recognized within the affiliate. While each affiliate may want to establish their own selection criteria, the following are possibilities for the Honor Roll of Affiliate Members:

• Quality of Leadership within the affiliate
• Years of membership and service
• Offices held in affiliate
• Publications appearing in affiliate journals or newsletters
• Awards or honors received from affiliate or other professional groups
• Teaching experience and level
• General service to education:  how an individual has promoted the affiliate’s practices, beliefs, etc.
• Evidence of professional growth such as advanced degrees, National Board Certification, district leadership, curriculum development, committee work, mentoring, etc.
• Presentations at local, state, and national conferences

For more information about participating in the Honor Roll of Affiliate Members as a Centennial project, please contact 100years@ncte.org. 

Affiliate Milestones
As we approach 2011, one project (of our possibilities) affiliates may want to pursue is creating and publicizing Affiliate Milestones which can be placed on the NCTE website and also publicized and recognized within the affiliate. The Affiliate Milestones would capture the affiliate’s history, however long or short, and provide for members a sense of the progress and ongoing work of the affiliate. 

While each affiliate may want to establish their own criteria, the following are possibilities for the Affiliate Milestones list:

1. Publications
2. Award programs
3. Conventions
4. Increase in membership
5. Projects
6. Recognition from NCTE or other professional organizations.

For more information about participating in the Affiliate Milestones as a Centennial project, please contact 100years@ncte.org. 

New or Updated Literary Map
As we approach 2011, one project (of our possibilities) affiliates may want to pursue is creating and publicizing a new or an updated Literary Map.  Such maps are excellent teaching materials and also foster community pride as localities become aware of the number of journalists, novelists, poets, and essayists who either were born or who live and write in their area.

For more information about participating in the Literary Map as a Centennial project, please contact 100years@ncte.org  or click on Affiliate Literary Maps to check out procedures for creating a literary map and to view current maps from other NCTE affiliates.

Then and Now
As we approach 2011, one project (of four possibilities) affiliates may want to pursue is inviting their members to write a brief essay on Then and Now, their own history and story of how their teaching has changed.  These stories can be publicized on affiliate websites, affiliate publications, at affiliate meetings.  Affiliate leaders have also suggested that they can be a writing activity in affiliate meetings and even a theme for an upcoming affiliate journal.  Then and Now can also be sent to NCTE (then&now@ncte.org) as part of the current Centennial Then and Now Teacher Stories project.

While affiliates may wish to provide other criteria, the following may provide an invitation for teachers to write:

We're interested in your history, how your teaching has changed—in how you have altered, adjusted, or shifted your habits and expectations—since the time you began teaching. Whether you are a 30-year classroom veteran or a new teacher, you have a story, and we’d like to hear it.  Send us 150 words about Then and Now, the changes in your teaching. Please include:

• your name
• your school name
• your school location
• number of years you have been teaching.

For more information about participating in Then and Now as a Centennial project, please contact 100years@ncte.org . 

Founded in Chicago in December 1911, NCTE has grown from its original 60 or so members to approximately 53,000.  Part of the strength of NCTE lies in its active affiliates all over the country, and sharing in the upcoming Centennial through worthwhile projects may be something for affiliates to consider strongly.