After our morning caucus from 7-9 am, we headed over to the convention floor. We had one election today to vote in a run-off for a an NEA Executive Director position. In the morning we worked on NBIs....well we tried to. Sometimes on the floor, there are lots of questions or points of order that delegates bring up, so in 90 minutes we got through 4 NBIs. We then heard from Matthew Powell of Kentucky, who is the 2019 Education Support Professional (ESP) of the year! Matthew's speech was a tribute to the ESPs who helped him in his life as a student. His speech was very moving, and I encourage you to watch it. After Matthew's speech, an award was presented to David Schneider, the 2019 NCHE Higher Educator of the Year, then we went back to do more NBIs until we received an elections report.
After lunch and more action on NBIs, we heard from 2019 National Teacher of the Year Rodney Robinson, who works at the Richmond Juvenile Justice Center and he is a VEA Member! Rodney's speech called for more teachers, especially teachers of color, so students may have a teacher who looks like them. Watch his speech, you won't be disappointed. We then moved on to proposed Legislative Amendments. Note this is an interesting process where the chair of the Legislative Committee can chime in and say if they find the amendment friendly or not. The friendly amendments passed with ease from the body, and the ones not considered friendly, we debated. Then, we moved on to proposed Resolutions Amendments. Resolutions are NEA's belief statements. VEA also has its own set of resolutions. After that work, we went back to NBIs. There are a total of 160 NBIs and we have 81 left for Day 4.
Your Blog Team's Top 3 Things from Today were:
- Rodney Robinson's speech. Have you watched it yet?!
- Bundling. It's cold on the convention floor and you'll see some folks bundled in jackets or blankets. But we don't want to talk about that kind of bundling, we want to discuss a suspension of the rules so a delegate can make a motion to bundle certain NBIs and refer to them to appropriate committee. The NEA Board of Directors will go around to makers of those certain NBIs and ask them if they would be willing to have their NBI referred and are given one minute to speak about their NBI at the mic. This can help move through the NBIs more quickly.
- The LGBT Banquet. From our aspiring educator delegate, "The banquet was great not just because the food was great and the music was even better, but it was amazing to see so many people come out to celebrate a community that isn't always celebrated."
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| From L-R: VEA VP Fedderman, NEA Secretary-Treasurer Princess Moss, VEA President James Livingston, and Rodney Robinson, the 2019 Teacher of the Year! |
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| From L-R: NEA president Lily Eskelsen Garcia pictured with VEA Aspiring Educator Jessica |
