Impact on My Career & Me as a Person

The Association and Me

By Kathryn DeCola, retired middle school teacher, Alexandria, Virginia

I was a member of the Association all of my professional career. From my very first year of teaching -- over thirty years ago -- I saw how much stronger a group is than an individual.

One spring in Alabama, at a very old school that was scheduled to be torn down at the end of the school year, the well failed. The county declared that it would be a waste of money to fix the well and that the students could use the woods for their needs.  Unbelievable you're thinking. All of the teachers agreed. We stood together and refused to work in such conditions. 

The plumbing was fixed promptly. Working together we made a difference.

Support to Speak Out
My dad always said if you aren't willing to work for a change, you have no right to complain.

When I moved to northern Virginia, I became a local association representative and a delegate to the state conventions. I met wonderful people who were working to improve education. At the local level, I was on the insurance committee that reviewed and recommended Kaiser Permanente as a choice for our county. 

Today, our members and nonmembers are still benefiting by having choices. Through work on the instruction committee, I spoke out for full funding. The Association has given me the support to speak out for what I believed was right, including the time that the Superintendent referred to teachers as "part time employees."

One year, a principal announced that teachers would be issued $5 to loan to students who did not have lunch money. If students didn't return the loans, teachers would have to provide the loans out of their own pocket. Many on the staff complained about how unfair that was. I picked up the phone and called the Association Uniserv Director. Later that day, the principal announced that lunch for students who didn’t have money would be handled through the office.

Training 
Association training helped me in a variety of ways. For example, I learned how to lay out and create brochures, which helped me in my work on a brochure and radio spots used in the local area. That led to helping edit a reading textbook and later to writing a portion of the book School-Based Change, published by the NEA Professional Library. With Association support, I helped produce a weekly half-hour radio show devoted to current education issues.

Networks
Through connections and networks provided by my work in the Association, I was able to have input into decisions that made a difference to my colleagues at my school, in my county and state, and throughout the nation. You won't find my name many places, because the outcomes were a team effort! However, I am proud of my contributions and I know I was part of the solutions.

Impact on Me as a Person
Although I have been retired for four years, I am still using skills -- in the volunteer activities that now fill my days -- that I learned while working with the Association. In the long run, the most important way the Association has affected my life was through the people I met and had the privilege of working with. We may not have always agreed, but we were all trying to achieve the same goal -- improving our profession and the lives of our students. We continually accomplished those goals. 

Association relationships grew into friendships that have been enduring.  I count as my best friend a person I met at the local association's welcome event for new teachers over thirty-five years ago.

I'm glad NEA's "Share Your Story"  asks members to write their history. Until I wrote this piece, I had not realized what an impact my Association work has had on the growth of my professional career and on me as a person.

Join your Association and be part of the solution!

About the Author
Kathryn DeCola retired as a middle school teacher at Holmes Middle School in Alexandria, Virginia. After earning her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Alabama, DeCola taught one year in Alabama and the next thirty years in Fairfax, Virginia, teaching grades 4-8 in several different schools. Since retiring, she has been a substitute teacher at all levels and a long-term substitute teacher at the Transitional ESOL High School in Falls Church, Virginia, for students 18 and older whose first language is not English. In her Association work, she served on the local and state Association boards of directors and as secretary for the local Association.