Your Education Association is your Lifeline

How has the medical profession made tremendous gains in health care over the last 100 years?  It’s simple. The medical profession has excelled thanks to medical associations that serve one purpose, improving the medical profession in order to improve the quality of life for the patients it serves. Without medical associations working in conjunction with practicing physicians who are constantly raising the bar, healthcare would not be anywhere close to where it is today.

So let’s apply this to school. Education organizations exist for one purpose and that is to improve the learning outcomes for all students by improving the effectiveness of the educators who work toward those outcomes.  In essence, they exist to improve the quality of life for the students it serves. 

Administrator organizations exist to teach administrators how to improve in their abilities to lead schools. Teacher organizations exist to support teachers and provide them new and improved ideas to strengthen instruction, and school board organzaitons exist to teach board members how to provide better oversight to the schools they’re responsible for.   

At the end of the day education organizations are lifelines for educators. They improve education, and they grow educators. The fact of the matter is this. If we care about being a lifeline for all kids, then we as educators must have our own personal lifeline. That personal lifeline is the education organization. We must not only join an organization, but we should be an active part of that organization. If you’re involved in learning from your organization, it’ll make you better at what you do, which in turn makes you better for the kids you serve. And that’ll make that organization a stronger lifeline for educators because you’re breathing life into the organization.