What are unretirees doing?

Are you retiring this year and thinking ahead to how you will use your time? Are you planning endless days of lounging on the beach or visiting exotic locales?

Many of my fellow NYSUT unretirees like Betty Ann Cassero, Bill Caffrey,Virginia Ettrick, Regina Broten, Linda Deasy and Sue Amato jumped out of the frying pan, so to speak and into the fire.

They are working with collegiate students at the community college and state university level , undergraduate future teachers, and retired members of their union local.

Keeping busy and engaged after working with students in k-12 over the course of a career is important to veteran teachers. Unretirement means many things. It can mean a relaxed lifestyle with "working" taking on a different meaning.

Meeting students in a collegiate setting once or twice a week is different than an everyday commitment. Helping student teachers hone their skills in the face to face classroom by observing them with real students is different than working with individual student teachers daily.

Helping fellow colleagues organize a retiree chapter of their local, Amityville Teachers Association, keeps retirees informed of the latest benefit and legislative information. It also helps unretirees contribute to the larger conversation involving retired members and their role in the union activities of New York State United Teachers and the American Federation of Teachers.

Still other colleagues are including into their daily schedules volunteer fundraising activities with the Susan G. Komen -Race for the Cure or American Heart Association.

You’ve made the decision that this is your last year in the classroom. You now have endless possibilities before you.

What are your plans? What will you be doing? Will you become a snowbird with your better half? Half the year at home or in some sunny clime? Will you be the caregiver for your grandkids when they get home from school in the afternoons? Have you planned to travel whenever and wherever the mood strikes you? What will you do? Inquiring minds want to know!!

You Can Do This!

Veteran teachers ! Are you on the integrating technology into my classroom bandwagon yet?

Veteran Tier 1 teachers in New York State are a dying breed! I don't mean that literally, though some would disagree. I mean there are fewer NYSUT Tier 1 veteran teachers in active classrooms within the state.If you began teaching before 1973 and did not leave the workforce for an extended period, you are a member of this retirement tier.

Veterans can tell you of all the acronyms and testing programs of earlier years, the PEP, PET, Compact for Learning,Madeline Hunter, Middle states accreditation, the list goes on and on.

The new, new thing however is integrating technology into everyday classroom practice. Smartboards, e-mail notifications, online learning, pd use, laptops for students, Sharepoint,Activboard and more, teachers are being asked to use technology on a regular basis. Veteran teachers have sometimes been described as less than enthusiastic with using the new technology tools.

How about blogging or contributing to your union newsletter? Are veteran teachers using this technology or social media strategy to voice their opinion?

This school year, administrators and teachers are trying to craft strategies to minimize loss of instructional time should students become ill with the H1N1 virus. What is your school district doing to prepare for an outbreak?Will school districts look to e-learning as a viable means to deliver instruction? If so, will Moodle be their LMS? Will Moodlerooms be their training, hosting and support partner? This is a shameless promotional plug btw!!

How are our veteran teachers holding up on the technology front? Are they members of The Future of Education website contributing to the ongoing discussions, webinars and online meetings with educators and authors?

How about maintaining membership in ISTE 2010, -International Society for Technology in Education Conference, formerly known as NECC, the National Education Computing Conference.

This annual conference welcomes educators from around the globe as they share proven ways technology use can assist in delivering instruction in the classroom. Have you investigated your local public television resources as an entity offering information about instructional technology?

As the instructional leader in the front of the room, how are you coping with the demands of integrating technology into your classroom? Are you improving your computer skills? Are you helping your students use technology to extend the learning in your class?


You can do this! Your voice is sought after as the school doors opened this year. Newly hired teachers and principals asked for your assistance on a whole host of procedures and practices that were used in past years to smooth the first days of a new school year. Using technology regularly is now second nature to many of your students. They've forgotten more about technology than you'll ever know! They are digital natives. They don't know of a time in their lives when they didn't use the internet or a computer.

Your level of knowledge as the instructional leader is critical to your success in adding technology to your teacher toolbox.The Power of Educational Technology blog is an interesting commentary on one veteran teacher's journey into using technology in her classroom. There are also state accrediting and research organizations examining the standards teachers need to meet to successfully integrate technology regularly in their everyday classroom practice.

Revitalizing the Veteran Teacher slide show. What do you think?