Go Electronic to Rejuvenate Your Organization

Molly Berger, 2007 President, Washington State Council of Teachers of English
www.wscte.org

Members of the Washington State Council of Teachers of English were dwindling and lack of communication seemed to be a major factor.  The word of the yearly conference or call for submissions rarely seemed to reach the English language arts teachers in the state. In addition, state standards and a reading and writing graduation

Molly Berger, 2007 President of the Washington Council of Teachers of English, shares the website and newsletters with affiliate leaders at the 2007 Affiliate Leadership Meeting.

requirement tested through the WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning) took most of the freedom out of professional development. Teachers just didn’t have time for professional organizations, and the gap in communication between K-12 and college professionals seemed to be growing.

In the face of these realities, the WSCTE board chose to rethink the approach to our organization and its role in teacher’s lives and student learning. We needed regular communication, accessible information, and meaningful offerings to rejuvenate our membership. And so, to begin our work on these goals, we chose to go electronic. 

We began by revising our website and creating an easy-to-remember Web address. We chose the theme, “Rejuvenate Your Passion, Your Professionalism, Your Love of Teaching the Language Arts.” This encompasses our goal that WSCTE will be the place where this can happen for English teachers in Washington State. The website is evolving. We have had open access for anyone who visits the site, but this fall we are adding a member section accessed by password. In this section we will publish our journal, board minutes, and other resources that make membership an advantage.

Our newsletter is also electronic. About six times a year, we send out news, announcements, articles, reflections, and resources in an electronic format. The email is actually a teaser and a link. We give the title, a few lines from each article, and the link, which opens our Web page where readers may download the complete newsletter. Through statistics on our server we can keep track of how many people are accessing the newsletter.

Mailing lists have been an advantage. The board listserv makes communication easy and archived. The member listserv is for announcements only. Each mailing must be approved by the moderator, which prevents spam from flooding the members’ mailboxes. One pitfall, however, is that many security programs now scan for listservs and send our messages to junk mail. Members must put us in their address books to prevent this.

This fall we are working to revitalize our membership. To do this and to shape our plans as we continue to grow, we are taking a survey of former members and of a selection of Washington State English teachers. We are also setting up a blog to discuss the role of WSCTE and are holding membership meetings to discuss the issue further.

The possibilities for our electronic organization are endless, but we continue to take deliberate steps and not get overwhelmed by possibilities and lose our focus. It is important to remember that electronics do not replace our face-to-face encounters; they support them. The desired result is for members to be better connected to resources and information, but mostly to each other, for we are our best resource. Electronics are just the tool for making that happen.