Baby Ava is here

Ava Quinn Harmon was born early Thursday morning. She weighed in at 7 pounds, 9 ounces, 19 3/4 inches long. Baby and mom are doing well. We hope to be home sometime on Saturday. Thanks for all of your prayers and kind words

Mark your calendars

I wanted to pass on a couple of important dates for your calendar. A bargaining prep and MESSA bargaining training will be held on January 17 from 9-12 at the Belding office. This is a great chance to begin thinking about upcoming bargaining and to learn about what is new with MESSA products. Nancy, Ervin, and I will be discussing how to use data in devoloping your initial proposals. (this is the same presentation that we will be making at the bargaining/pac/pr conference in Detroit) Larry Donston will be handling the MESSA portion of the morning.

On February 10, MESSA field staff will be at the Belding MEA office to discuss the new rating methodology. The information presented at this session will help in understanding how your rates will be determined. The information presented at this session will be different from Larry's in January.

Please rsvp for these training sessions with Cheryl and Michelle. Refreshments will be served at both trainings. I look forward to seeing you there.

What is collaboration?

A little late in getting this out but when I went to the IPD conference, I attended a session that was partly about collaboration. I had some former colleagues from Holt present on year round schools and collaboration. Most of their presentation centered on the year round concept because the participants had a lot of questions about how it works. As an aside, questions about it stopped when the MEAP scores were presented. The scores were amazing and solidified their point that year round school and its shorter breaks helps in the ability of the students to retain the material that was taught.

Ok, but the idea of collaboration is what I am interested in. In education, we use this term in lots of different ways. How do you define collaboration? I am curious to see if we define collaboration different depending on the setting. If there are different definitions, how do we define it as it applies to the Association work that we do? Love to know your thoughts on this subject

Bargaining Conference

It is that time of year to pre-register for the Bargaining/PAC/PR conference in Detroit, Feb 5-7. In order to take advantage of the pre-registration reduced rate, you need to have your information postmarked by Dec. 15. For UBC members, remember that there is money set aside to reimburse your local for a portion of the conference costs. For registration information, contact our office or visit www.mea.org

I heard that session #202 is a great session. It is entitled "Is it Diamonds or Data?" There will be a sneak preview of this session for BIMEA bargainers in January. Contact Nancy, Ervin, or myself for more details...

What am I thankful for?

Here are some of the things that I am thankful for since moving to the Belding office last January...

--your members that provide positive, learning opportunities for all students
--the work that you and all local leaders do on behalf of the members
--working in the Belding office
--a successful election of our recommended candidates
--a presidential election that proves that all dreams can be realized
--good health and a growing family

I hope that you enjoy the time spent with family and friends over Thanksgiving break. Use this time to count all the blessings that you are thankful for as well.

MEA on Facebook

It looks like some of the ideas that we discussed at the coordinating council vision meeting was already being worked on by MEA. You can now find MEA at Facebook. Just search for Michigan Education Association. Just another way to get our members involved with MEA and your local association.

Rep. Calley Leg Council

Just got home from a Leg Council meeting with Rep. Brian Calley at the Corner Landing. For close to 2 hours we (about 10 people total) had a very good discussion with him. The topics ranged from the most recent election results to differentiated diploma endorsements/designations. About half way through the meeting, it finally dawned on me that his ideas around different endorsements for diplomas is another way to look at the dropout crisis facing our schools. It allowed for the opportunity to show that the recent dropout hearings that MEA helped to organize across the state has a connection to the ideas that our state rep has. At the end of the conversation, we asked him what message he would like us to share with our members. He wanted us to have our members get behind an issue that they feel is important...I think that he would like this to be the issue regarding differentiated diplomas that he has done some work on . However, he made this message clear....MEA is a powerful organization that can make things happen in Lansing. He pointed out victories of MEA recommended candidates, the impact of the dropout hearings, and how Lansing pays attention when MEA gets behind an issue. For me, this made me think about how MEA has the potential of taking issues at the grassroots level and using the power of our organization to make substantive changes in the educational process. Essentially, it is time for our members to get politically active. It is time to use the power and strength that MEA has in order to create the changes that we want to see.

On a final note, how important is it to become politically active? Rep. Calley made the comment that the campaign for 2010 state legislative seats has already started. That means the PAC dollars you contribute today will help to continue to elect those legislators that continue to do what is best for public education.