Our trip to Henry A Brown elementary has finally come and gone....

and what a rewarding experience it was!

Not only were the principal, teacher support supervisor, teachers, and students very excited and appreciative of our generous donation (about 1500 books!!!) and $175.00 which will give them 116 more books!! It was just the moral booster we needed to keep on truckin' toward our degree considering the "political climate" in NJ right now.  Reading to the students reinforced in us that this is what we want to do!!

Thanks to everyone who participated & and big thanks to Kappa Delta Pi's and it's President, Eugene Grear (and RU-SNJEA's new Membership Chair) for joining us in this book drive and event!!  Hopefully this can become a yearly event!

Reminising on our First Semester & Congratulations to our new officers!!

Today was our last official meeting of the semester.  We held elections and brainstorms ideas for next semester to work on during the summer.

I (Jaime) would like to thank everyone who helped to make this semester a success, it was our first full semester at a club on Rutgers Campus and we did a great job!

Here's a recap of our events:
Visit to NJEA Headquarters
Book Drive (30 boxes of books collected & $175 to date)
H.A. Brown visit to donate books & read to students
Student NJEA Conference
NJ Retired EA seminar

So, for our first semester--we've done quite a bit!!

Elections were held today and our new officer line up is...

President Jaime

Vice President Tara

Secretary Jen

Treasurer Brittany

GOA Rep Ashley

Membership Chair Eugene

Historian Rachel

Here's to an AWESOME Fall semester!!!  Oh, and stay tuned for summer meeting dates as well as meeting dates for Fall.

Save the Date!!

There will be a rally in Trenton to show Governor Christy that there are people that support education & try and persuade him to re-evaluate the cuts he is proposing to make.

Please keep Saturday May 22nd open!!  

 More details to come, stay tuned!

Any questions or if you are DEFINITLY going to attend, email Jaime

Student NJEA Conference overview

Saturday, April 17th.  Jaime, Eugene & Jen attended the SNJEA Conference in Princeton NJ.

It was, for those who have been there, the NJEA convention on a smaller scale.  Vendors were they giving away stuff, there were workshops to attend, and the food.....yum!

The workshops were informative and will help us make sure we are ready to get the first job.

If you would like a summary of a specific workshop, ask at one of our meetings and we can briefly give you the highlights of the session, it's worth knowing!

The workshops were:

• Are you prepared for your first job?
• Electronic communication & social networking saftey
• These are not quite as common sense as they sound, some points and tips were brought up that you wouldn't normally think would be an issue!

 

NJREA meeting overview

Jaime, our president attended a meeting of NJREA NJ (Retired) EA last week.  The meeting covered pensions, health insurance and how it will affect those already retired and future generations (us!).  And, of course, the "political climate" could not be avoided as part of the discussion.

Here were some key points, don't hold me to my word as these are from my notes & memory.  If you want to make sure something is factual, do some research & please, if I'm wrong let me know so I can make corrections.

If budget passes:

• Teachers benefits will be merged with other state workers benefits
• meaning when they negotiate a change in their benefits, ours will be affected
• Pensions 
• for us, they may not be there
• if they are, they (not sure who, government presumably) can change just about anything about them before, and after we retire.
• NJEA is particularly upset about this because the state is supposed to contribute to teacher pensions but out of the last 15 years, has only contributed 2 years.  NJEA dues pay teacher pensions, so they don't see why the state should be able to change teacher pensions as will.
• Insurance
• We will be linked with state workers insurance (I think)
• Coordination of Benefits (the ability to use yours & your spouses insurance to pay claims) will be taken away.
• higher co-pays, etc
• Politics
• Considering what our future profession is facing, we need to be activist for what we beleive!
• We need to vote on the school budget (which is today...)
• we need to attend rally's
• we need to stay on top of what's happening so we can make informed decisions about our future as an educator!

We are in the NJEA Reporter!!

Our visit to NJEA Headquarters on March 13th made it into NJEA's newspaper and our picture is there too!

What a way to be recognized for our hard work in getting this group up and running!  

NJEA Reporter-Check Page 8 now!!

H.A. Brown Details

We are scheduled for our Read Across America Event (better late than never right?!) for Friday, April 23 at 12pm.  We will be reading to Kindergarten and First graders.

Preferably, we will have a few different readers to divide the students up and keep them interested with smaller groups and if possible, move them (or us) around to give the students the chance to hear different books by different readers.

Details will be solidified at our April 21st meeting (among other things), so be sure to be there and bring books and monetary donations!!

Any questions, email our President, Jaime