CTA's Summer Institute
Volume 12, Issue 7 - April 2008
CTA’s Summer Institute, scheduled for Aug. 3-8 at UCLA, is offering a variety of sessions designed to assist chapters in representation, help teachers build leadership skills, and improve teaching and learning.
New this year is an Instruction and Professional Development Strand training titled “Moving from Compliance to Committed Action: Sustaining Change in QEIA Schools.” Designed for school teams of teachers, administrators, education support professionals (ESP), parents and community advocates, it will focus on the transition from planning to implementation of the QEIA program. Speakers include Kimberly Thomas Rapp, Robert Marzano and Andy Hargreaves.
Also new this year is the Legal Track offered Sunday to Tuesday by the CTA Legal Department. It addresses labor law issues, Education Code rights and duties of school employees including ESP, and other legal sources of employee rights, such as discrimination statutes, whistle-blower protections, and basic constitutional rights on the job.
Other Summer Institute trainings include:
Emerging Leaders — Designed to arm members with the information, resources and skills needed to become effective organizers and future leaders in their local chapter, it includes the basic concepts of unionism and advocacy, association history and structure, and effective organizing techniques.
Essential Bargaining Skills — In this highly interactive session, designed to guide participants in the use of a 10-step process to ensure a successful bargaining experience, teams of participants will bargain a mock agreement and work with coaches to determine which strategies were successful.
Advanced Bargaining Skills — This track covers effective bargaining strategies and techniques, identifying key elements of the district budget, defining and negotiating issues, balancing the goals of complex constituencies, and expanding the scope of bargaining to include school improvement issues.
School Finance — This session includes tracking the trends of budget priorities, calculating the cost of a bargaining proposal, determining a district’s ability to pay, and developing comparability data to support bargaining objectives.
School Finance II (Using Data to Organize) — Participants will learn how to assess a district’s fiscal health and priorities using CTA budget analysis software.Two 2.5-day sessions are offered.
Health Benefits Strand — This strand focuses on understanding the complexities of the current health benefits crisis, working in coalitions to contain health care costs, and organizing chapter members around health care issues.
Member Benefits Strand — This strand will teach participants how members can save money, utilize their benefits and better connect to the local, state, and national associations.
Community Outreach Strand — This strand will examine a local chapter community outreach project that successfully organized education stakeholders to help close the achievement gap. Strand participants will learn about building relationships with the community; encouraging parent involvement; being proactive; and tying community outreach to educational issues, such as Program Improvement and QEIA.
Communications Strand — Participants can choose two of the three two-day tracks: “Chapter Newsletters from A to Z” helps participants learn to create local newsletters. “Creating a Chapter Website with Blogging Technology” covers the nuts and bolts of websites. “It’s News to Me: Effective Communications” covers the skills necessary to be a confident spokesperson.
The deadline for registration is July 11. Online registration is available at: www.cta.org/conferences. For more information, call (650) 552-5355.
