National Middle School Association
NMSA Offers Conferences, Publications, and Opportunities For All
© Amy Horn
The National Middle School Association (NMSA) can help middle school teachers in many ways. The answers or advice they need might just be a click away.
Once middle school teachers get into the classroom, they often devote the majority of their time to planning lessons, implementing ideas, assessing progress, and communicating results. In reality, many teachers are practitioners; they spend their days with their feet in the trenches-not their noses in the research. Middle level educators can find themselves in their own little worlds, in their own little classrooms. They can start to lose the connection between college textbooks or best practices and classroom routines.
It is easy to find oneself in this situation but almost as easy to find a way out. The National Middle School Association (NMSA) is an organization to which thousands of middle school teachers turn for problem-solving, publications, and presentations. NMSA is an excellent resource of which all middle level educators should be aware, be familiar, and possibly be a member. It's understandable that classroom teachers do not have the time to locate the latest research or tackle the newest trends or even plan their professional development without assistance. NMSA can aid teachers in those areas and more.
Their mission statement, adopted by NMSA's Board of Trustees in 2004, clearly spells out what this organization stands for, supports, and is committed to achieving. "National Middle School Association is dedicated to improving the educational experiences of young adolescents by providing vision, knowledge, and resources to all who serve them in order to develop healthy, productive, and ethical citizens." Ideally, it reflects the goal that every teacher in the middle school is attempting to reach. The key to remember is that middle school teachers don't have to reach it alone. They can reach out to NMSA for help.
A good place to start might be at NMSA's 33rd Annual Conference and Exhibit, held this year from November 2-4, in Nashville, Tennessee. It is estimated that 8,500 teachers and administrators will be in attendance to share tools, knowledge, expertise, and support. Everything from Advisory to Literacy to Safe Schools and School Improvement will be covered. Teachers who don't know a lot about NMSA currently should check out the conference if they can. They will leave not only knowing more about NMSA but more about themselves and that little world called middle school, as well.
