First Meeting of the 2013 and 2014 year!

We held our first meeting of year on Monday September 23! All of us were THRILLED to see so many new students want to get involved in SNEA and make the most of being an education major here at Westfield State! It was also awesome to see some familiar faces come join us again for another year!

 

At the meeting we did many activities to get SNEA rolling! While eating pizza we discussed what SNEA is and what kinds of workshops and projects we do over the year.  One of our goals for this year is to really build a community between all our members and the board! The board went around said who they were and talked a little about themselves and what their individual roles and projects are. As a refresher this years SNEA board consists of:

- Meaghen Chalmers

        > President

      > Project: Bigs and Littles and many other presidential duties

- Kate Roberts

       > Vice President

- Colleen Macdonald

       > Treasure

       > Project: Kid Zone 

- Alyssa Perry

      > Secretary

      > Project: Benefit walks

- Julie Dabenigno

      > Editor

      > Social Media

      > Project: Apparel

- Laura Smith
      > Historian
      > Project: Homeless Shelter
                         Bulletin Boards
- Katie Thomann
      > Secondary Education Rep
      > Project: Read Across America
- Underclassman Rep
      > A Freshman or Sophomore can run for this position! If you are interested in getting involved run at our next meeting, October 7! You can run with a partner if you want to!

 

Check out the Meet The Executive Board page on our blog to learn more about this years board members!

To begin building relationships with one another we played a few icebreakers. The first game we played Meaghen asked some questions and if it applied to you, you stood up. This game allowed us all to get to know one another a little bit better. It was also cool to see all the connections between everyone. We also had all our members write down questions, concerns or ideas on index cards. A few were able to be discussed at the meeting but we did  look through all the index cards after the meeting! There were some similarities between the questions about the dreaded MTELS, what classes/professors to take, practicums and student teaching. We have started to plan some of our future meeting around your questions.

This years T-shirt design was showed at the meeting!
 

 If you are interested in a T-shirt but did not sign up for one don't worry sign ups will be available at the next meeting!










We began the process for our Bigs and Littles mentoring program. Bigs and Littles is a program where a Senior and Sophomore are paired up and a Junior and Freshman are paired up. It is a great program where the Littles get to learn so much about being an education major from the Bigs! You can use each other for support, ask questions and even make a friend! During the meeting you will engage in activities and this year there is also going to be Bigs and Littles outings! If you are interested and did not sign up because you did not get the sheet or could not make the meeting please email Meaghen by next Wednesday! Meaghen's email is Mchalmers8543@westfield.ma.edu

To end the meeting we had a few raffles where some of our members won some great books to start building their classroom library, apparel and a tote!

We could not be more thrilled with how our first meeting went and are very excited for this upcoming year!

Here is the upcoming meeting dates for the fall semester!

October 7

October 21

November 4

November 18

December 2

These are all at 7:00 in the SGA room!

-Julie

 

Children's Author: Jerry Pallotta

At our last meeting, we were lucky enough to have Jerry Pallotta come and speak. We got to learn a lot of interesting information about how his books get published and how he got started writing. My favorite part about the workshop was learning all of the little secrets that most people do not know about his books and the illustrations inside of them. We learned many fun facts and he was so funny to listen to!

We were able to purchase his books at the meeting, and he even signed them for anyone who bought them!

 

 

 

He read some of his books to us while they were broadcasted on the projector and he told us fun facts about how the stories had changed since he originally wrote them. He even showed us orignal manuscripts from when he was first drafting out some of his books.

It was a great meeting and we are so thrilled that he was able to come!


Erica
SNEA Vice President

Walking with Natalie

Hi everyone,

Some of you may know by now that SNEA has been planning a benefit walk called "Walking with Natalie" for some time now, and it's finally getting close!  On Sunday October 14 we will be holding the walk at the Westfield State University Woodward indoor track, all proceeds will benefit the Fothergill family in purchasing a new handicapped van for their daughter.  If you would like to register, donate or for more information please visit walkingwithnatalie.eventbrite.com! Or, as always, contact us at westfieldsnea@gmail.com!  We are also going to be having a registration table in the dinning commons this week and next!

Meaghen
SNEA President

Hi guys!

I know it's been a bit since our first meeting but we wanted to put up a quick recap incase anyone had any questions before our meeting on Monday!
      >We introduced our board, whom you can learn about by visiting each of our pages at the top of the blog
     > We discussed several upcoming events and handed out a calendar... we will post a copy of that on here too so that everyone can stay on top of all the awesome events we have!
     > Callie passed around shelter sign ups and we are thrilled to have so much interest, we know you guys will love the visits as much as we do!
     > Erica talked about the Bigs&Littles program where underclassman can be paired with an upperclassman mentor to learn the ropes and make new friends! We will have sign ups at this next meeting!
     > Scholastic book order forms were handed out so that we can all start building our libraries, if you filled out a form feel free to get them back to Britney!
     > Jess told everyone about "Walking with Natalie" the benefit we have coming up in a few weeks, we're going to be looking for volunteers soon so look for information about that!
     > Kate closed the meeting discussing our new social media: our group on facebook (Westfield State University SNEA) our twitter @westfieldSNEA and of course our blog!

So thanks again for everyone who came out to the first meeting, we hope to see you again this Monday October 1 at 7 in Scanlon Banquet Hall for the next meeting where we have guest speaker Jerry Pollatta and tons of new information for everyone!

Meaghen
SNEA President

Hello everyone!

With the 2012 Presidential Elections coming up I thought that it would be a good idea for you to read about the candidates' views on education.  The URLS will take you to the issues and each candidate's views on education.  However, I encourage you to look at all the other issues that they talk about because this election will be affecting us the most since many of us will be becoming teachers in the next couple of years.  If you have any questions or things that you would like to talk about please feel free to contact us!

Mitt Romney's Views:
http://www.mittromney.com/issues/education

Barack Obama's Views:
http://www.barackobama.com/education?source=primary-nav

Britney
SNEA Treasurer

Hi Everyone,

Over the Summer some of us had an amazing opportunity to attend the NEA's Student Leadership Conference in Washington D.C!  While we were there we got to work on an national outreach project at Thomas Johnson Middle School in Maryland and attend two days of conference workshops.  We learned so much ranging from membership benefits, to new ways to recruit future teachers and about voter registration, since it is election year after all! During the conference we also elected a new Student Program Chair, David Tjaden, if you want more information about the elections or the student program you can check out the NEA student program page. We all had an amazing time and are definitely looking forward to any future conferences we can attend! Below are some of the pictures we took while we were in Washington :)

Sight seeing on our first day!

Ready bright and early for the outreach project in Maryland

Second day of conference workshops

Westfield State SNEA Board (minus Callie) and fellow Massachusetts SEAM members from Worcester State!

Thanks for reading!

Meaghen

SNEA President