How will you spend your summer vacation? One great way is to attend the 2004 CTA Summer Institute. Held at UCLA July 25-30, the institute will provide teachers an opportunity to learn new skills, enhance existing skills and get prepared to address upcoming issues.
The deadline to sign up is July 5, but early registration is encouraged to get your first choice of workshops. The institute begins Sunday, July 25.
Following is an overview of the major strands and the training tracks available within them:
The Negotiations and Finance Strand offers partial week sessions on: Bullying and Sexual Harassment Prevention; ESEA, IDEA and Special Education Needs: Connecting the Dots; and The Rising Cost of Health Care Benefits. New this year is A Framework for Understanding Poverty, which helps participants figure out how to successfully teach students from backgrounds of generational poverty. It includes the "hidden rules" of behavior and language.
Full-week sessions offer a variety of choices, whether you are new to the bargaining process (Essential Bargaining) or have more experience and want to sharpen your skills (Advanced Bargaining). Tracks are also being offered for Emerging Leaders, designed to provide faculty reps, committee members and education advocates with the resources and skills to become effective organizers and future leaders in their local chapters. A track on School Finance will increase confidence in handling the impact of the budget crisis on bargaining, which includes how to determine a district's ability to pay.
The Member Benefits Strand , new this year, will provide training to local site representatives, membership chairs and recruitment teams on the products and services offered through CTA Member Benefits. The partial-week session is designed to help local chapters develop organizing strategies to recruit and retain members.
The Instruction and Professional Development Strand will focus on Strong Schools! Smart Schools! School Improvement! Sessions are designed to help teachers of all grades who work in schools that have been labeled "underperforming" and are facing sanctions. The focus will be on best practices for closing the achievement gap, strategies that support standards-based instruction, collaborative and team-building skills, team leadership skills and relationship-building within the community.
The Communications Strand will offer three tracks. Chapter Newsletters from A to Z deals with creating and producing local association newsletters. Designed for newsletter beginners, it will offer participants the chance to learn by producing the Summer Institute Newsletter, which is distributed to all participants. Chapter Websites: The Best of the Basics will offer a beginning look at creating and writing for local websites. It's News to Me: Effective Communications covers ongoing chapter communications, crisis situations, media and community relations, and speaking before groups.
The Running for Office Track is designed to provide members with the skills necessary to run for association or local public office. The Women's Leadership Training Program Cadre developed the program, which is open to men and women. Components include making a decision to run, preparing your campaign, presenting yourself, writing speeches and more.
Child advocate and entertainment icon Rob Reiner will be the featured speaker at the opening session July 25. He directed such hits as When Harry Met Sally, Stand by Me and The Princess Bride, and portrayed "Meathead" on the television series "All in the Family." His career as a children's advocate includes chairing the successful campaign to pass Proposition 10 in 1998 to improve early childhood education programs in California.
For more information, call CTA Negotiations and Organizational Development at (650) 552-5395 or visit the CTA website and click on CTA Sponsored Conferences and Events.
