NEA President Lily Eskelsen García during her keynote address at the 2020 NEA Representative Assembly. Of all the events and activities that ground to a halt amid the greatest public health crisis in the nation’s history, the 2020 National Education Association Representative Assembly (RA) wasn’t going to be among them. On July 2 and 3, the more than 7,000 delegates gathered remotely (of course)
In her first address to RA delegates, NEA Executive Director Kim Anderson began with honesty and humanity, presenting a piece of herself to illustrate the profound impact educators can have on a life. “I want to share with you today some things that are part of my lived experience….as one of your former students, as a parent with two children of my own, and as a person of color in America,” she s
National Teacher of the Year Tabatha Rosproy, a preschool teacher from Kansas, addressed the NEA Representative Assembly on Friday, exhorting them to “elevate the voices of the unheard” in their union and in their school communities. A proud member of Kansas NEA, Rosproy said she knows what it’s like to be overlooked. She was the first preschool teacher in her rural, southwest Kansas district to
Andrea Beeman, NEA’s 2020 ESP of the Year, told delegates to NEA’s virtual Representative Assembly on July 3 how the selfless acts of others inspired her to devote a career of service to students with intellectual disabilities. “I am committed every day to giving my students three things: Love, laughter, and learning,” Beeman, a paraeducator from Maple Heights, Ohio, said. It’s what she was surro
Elizabeth Davenport, a professor of educational leadership at Alabama State University, recently spoke with NEA Today about her reputation as a hard grader, her dedication to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and why the greatest achievement of her five-decade career in higher education rests with the women she has mentored. On Friday, July 3, the NEA Representative Assembly h
The nation stands at a crossroads, said NEA President Lily Eskelsen García in her final keynote address to the 2020 NEA Representative Assembly on Thursday, and it’s up to educators everywhere to make sure it chooses the correct path. Even though the 2020 RA is being conducted remotely during the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 8,000 educator delegates from every state have come together vir
U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images) Today the United States Supreme Court allied itself with the far-right school privatization agenda by sanctioning the use of public funds for private school tuition. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled in Espinoza v.
