Design

The first step was meeting with the President and Second Vice President of our local and the local State Organizing Director. We decided that face to face contact was going to be the most important thing in getting members organized and that we wanted to also have an opportunity for many to gather and hear about what their union (national, state, local) is doing for them. From this meeting I developed an approach to strengthening our local union through door knocking (Artifact 5, includes discussion questions) and a beginning of the year BBQ (Artifact 4).

The first prong focused on new hires. The district offers several new teacher orientations, three at the end of June and three at the beginning of August. As a union we are given a few minutes to chat with each group. A script was developed to help give them a quick “Hi” from a union representative, we handed out lists of board and building representatives and a flyer for the BBQ in August (Artifacts 1-4). These new hires were then door knocked by the local President and myself to help explain more about the union and to ask them to sign continuing membership forms.

The second prong was utilizing our local Member Organizing team to knock on the doors of members. Again, there were two types of members we were targeting: Type 1- Current members who have signed continuing membership form; Type 2- Current members who have not filled out continuing membership form.

The third prong is for the President and I to target current employees who are non-members and to try and have a thoughtful discussion that may change their minds.

All of this work is to culminate in a back to school BBQ where we gather members and inform them about their national, state, and local benefits and provide them with an opportunity to mingle together.

Throughout this process the competencies have been deeply on my mind. When talking to different members group process has been very important because they have each had their own vested interest in what is going on and I have had to focus on managing the dynamics of their interest along with any conflicts they have brought up for their workplace or what has been going on in our district. I am also identifying new leaders in buildings and helping them understand why their voice is so important. This also aligns with competencies collaborate purposefully and building capacity of others. Throughout membership discussions I am empowering them to develop a leadership potential within our union and helping to identify shared visions that will help us to be successful as a union. The technology piece for this has been in developing the flyers and information to be handed out to members and using the NEA VAN to assist in door knocking and taking notes.

My leadership helps address the needs of our stakeholders because I am in conversation with them about what is going on, identifying potential leaders, and showing them how they can be involved. It is important to talk to members because we are all stakeholders in what is happening in our district. Having these face to face conversations allows me to collaborate with individuals in our membership that I may not typically see. We are facing some major changes and we know that there are voices that will help gather and express information appropriately, and that different buildings have different needs to be shared and considered while we go through this time of change. We want to ensure that we are actively communicating with our members and the best way to do that is to have building reps in each building. By using the NEA VAN we are able to keep track of the data we collect and compile it into spreadsheets to be looked at and used as we start our new school year.

Because so much of my plan involves knocking on members doors and having conversations with them I will be overcoming obstacles in the moment. The biggest potential obstacle is encountering unhappy members/non-members and having to work through their issues or conflict that is happening. I have found that listening is one of the best ways to help members work through an issue and if I don’t have an answer for them to find out and report back to them. I will know if our action plan is successful when we begin running our membership data in the fall, when we see if we have identified potential leaders in buildings where we haven’t had them before and filled those spots, and if we are able to fill the elementary board position. Much of this is information that our local Union must report to the state union, therefore, I will be able to compare whether the data has improved or not.