Local educator attends 'Leader U' conference

Kennett Community Teachers' Association President Tina Brown, center, recently attended a Missouri State Teachers' Association (MSTA) "Leader U" conference at Mountain View, Mo. Pictured with Brown are MSTA Executive Director Kent King, left, and MSTA President Rebecca Ruth, right. Photo provided

Tina Brown, a teacher at Kennett Middle School and current president of the Kennett Community Teachers' Association (KCTA), recently attended a Missouri State Teachers' Association (MSTA) "Leader U" conference aimed at helping cultivate strong leadership and team-builidng skills.

"I am this year's president of the KCTA and as that, I went to the conference this summer at Bunker Hill," Brown said. "The whole conference was about learning what MSTA can do for our local teachers and our school district. They had a lot of information about MSTA gaining members and what MSTA had to offer those members. They also talked about the legislation and how MSTA is the voice for all local teachers who are members in our judicial system, whether it be teacher's salary, No Child Left Behind, rules and regulations, or new laws governing our kids and the work we do in our classes."

Brown said the conference was a three-day workshop on "how to be an effective unit and how to also be effective with the parents and getting them involved with the school district so that it is a group effort."

"If a parent is at home going, 'I can't believe you got that teacher, I heard she is terrible,' and the kid comes to your classroom and that is the first thing they have heard, then they already have a preconceived idea of what they are coming into," Brown said. "So, we talked a little bit about that and trying to build community and parent involvement."

One of the things Brown said has really worked since the conference is the membership drive.

"One of the things that MSTA set as a goal for us is increasing the number of teachers enrolled in MSTA," Brown said. "We've never been real active in our support staff, like our custodian, bus drivers, aides, and secretaries, [however], MSTA says they are all covered by the benefits of [the association]. Last year we had eight support staff as members and I think as of today, we have 30 enrolled."

Brown said one of the main things she learned at the conference is that MSTA works for "anyone who has direct contact with the students of Kennett Public Schools."

"As president, I wanted to be able to get involved and know what it was I was representing and what I was going to be presenting to the teachers at our school district," Brown continued. "I felt like it was something I needed to buy-into first, before I tried to sell it to somebody else. [MSTA] did a really good job of doing that because I knew very little [prior to the event]. I had been a member of KCTA [and MSTA] and I really didn't know what my benefits were of being a MSTA member."

Brown said another important aspect of the increasing MSTA enrollment is the number of votes the district can cast.

"For every 25 members that we have to sign up, we get a representative vote at convention in St. Louis," Brown said. " What they do is they bring all this legislative [material] and different [members] will present it and then the delegates who have voting power vote on whether we agree with it or don't agree with it.

"If we agree with it, then MSTA presents it to our representatives and our congressmen so they can vote on it. So the more members we have, the more voting power we have. That has been a real big deal with us, especially back during the ice storm."

Brown said it was legislators that saw that school impacted by the ice storm did not have to go into the summer to finish making the days missed.

"The district doesn't make that decision," Brown said.

"The legislators do. Our teachers took all that information to Jefferson City and presented it and because we have a strong KCTA and MSTA backing, we had a little clout when we went to talk to those representative and said, 'This is an unusual situation, but it could happen again. People are distressed and adding more weeks of school on to us because of something we couldn't control is not going to be beneficial to anybody. So [the legislators] saw that and that is why we didn't have to go into the summer. Kennett was instrumental in making that change because of what we presented during the ice storm."

Brown said she encourages the members of the district to join MSTA because of the voting power it can give the district.

"If we don't have a strong showing when we go to the convention, St. Louis, Kansas City, and larger schools have more voting power," Brown said, adding that the larger schools may vote for something that is beneficial to them, and not so beneficial to Kennett Public Schools.