Building Our Power with President Princess Moss

Dear NEA members,

It is an honor to serve as your new president, and I am thrilled to lead the National Education Association to new heights, in direct partnership with you, our members.

I am inspired by your dedication, how you show up every day for your students, your communities, and for each other. Together, we will build on our union’s proud legacy to ensure every student, in every ZIP code, has access to a high-quality public education.

Through union-wide, grassroots organizing, we will fight for the resources, respect, and voice educators deserve, because when we invest in public education, we invest in the future of every student. We have been on defense for too long. We have been defending funding, defending rights, defending the very existence of public education. 

We must go on the offense. It’s time to move from resistance to renaissance.

Sincerely,

NEA President Princess Moss

FAST FACTS

Number of NEA Representative Assemblies I’ve attended: 37 

Number of years I spent in the classroom: 21

Number of School buses in my office (I collect them to honor my school bus driver parents): 40

If I hadn’t become a music teacher, I would have taught social studies, which was my favorite subject starting in sixth grade.

Q&A

You asked, I answered

Why did you decide to go into teaching?

I’m the daughter of two school bus drivers, and my parents always told me and my two siblings that a good education was our ticket to a bright future. I can still hear my dad telling us to do well in school, get your education. That was the top priority for him. I went to Mary Washington College (now University of Mary Washington) on scholarships, and was inspired to become an education major by my music professors and also by my older sister, who was a math teacher. She had Virginia Education Association (VEA) journals delivered to the house—and I was so intrigued by them! 
I became a student member of VEA and, after graduation, got my first teaching job in Louisa County.

What are your objectives and goals for NEA?

Organize, organize, organize! We’re doing a lot of that already, but I want to see us being more intentional. We have to build community in our ranks. I want to see NEA build more community with our members, so we can be the force to move forward a pro-public education agenda. We can’t live in silos; we all need to understand there is more we can do to impact our livelihood and the students we serve. There is so much goodness in our professions. Every person brings a ray of hope to NEA. That’s what we need, and I want to focus on our members, our 3 million rays of hope.