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Monday, October 28, 2013

Union-District Teams Agree Collaboration is Key to Student Success | NEA Today

Union-District Teams Agree Collaboration is Key to Student Success | NEA Today:

Union-District Teams Agree Collaboration is Key to Student Success

October 28, 2013 by egraham  
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By Edward Graham
Collaboration between teachers and school administrators, as well as the surrounding community, is essential in insuring the best education possible for students. That’s why on October 24th and 25th, the NEA Foundation welcomed 19 union-district leadership teams comprised of over 200 eager educators for a two-day conference at the NEA headquarters in Washington, DC.
Photo: NEA Foundation/Lauren Fish
The annual meeting, now in its 7th year, brought together union-district leadership teams from the NEA Foundation’s Closing the Achievement Gaps Initiative and the Institute for Innovation in Teaching and Learning to develop successful school-wide approaches to improving student success, learning conditions, and teacher-district collaboration.
“It’s exciting to me that, at this time in our history, these kinds of things are happening through collaboration,” NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said during his opening remarks at the 2013 union-district convening. “I just absolutely believe that when administrators and school board members and unions come together and are able to reach out to parents and the community, it’s the only way to build really sustainable change. That’s the power of collaboration, of bringing minds together for the common goal of focusing on the student and 
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