The OCEA Health & Wellness committee is sponsoring a series of workshops this school year. Each month a different hands-on workshop is being offered to get information to you and to provide materials for you to take back to your students. Recertification and professional growth credit has been applied for. Workshops planned so far:

October: "Food Fads" - What are you eating?

November: Dairy Council of Nevada presents - "What's New?"

December: "No Weight Gain Over the Holidays." A make-and-take class.

OCEA and Pinion Plaza have put together a fun bowling league for teachers and staff. All you need for a team is three people. It is a handicap format which means you can be horrible and still end up winning cash. Bowling is on Mondays at 3:50 p.m. for 12 weeks at a cost of $6.00 per week. No fee for shoes or balls. The league starts on Monday September 14. Come with a team or by yourself (we will find you a team). This is a great way to meet other people and to relax after a Monday at school. See you there!

They say it is hard to get a book published. In fact, it is almost easier to be drafted by a pro football team. Well, I have a hard time believing it when I seem to constantly come across books like An Abridged Collection of Interdisciplinary Laws. I can't imagine who in their right mind would publish this one, but then again maybe the content I plan to share will explain. This book is a collection of laws placed upon humanity by incredibly observant people. I hope you can use some of these wise suggestions in the coming school year or if not at least they will explain why EVERYTHING GOES WRONG.

These are only a sampling of the mighty wisdom in this book. But I want to leave you with my favorite two:

I remember being told once by a teacher of more than 15 years experience that I was having too much "F"un writing with my students.

My first thought was confusion. "F"un—I don't think my students would call writing fun. In fact, they probably used words like boring, stupid, torture, and carpal tunnel. But while they were complaining, they were writing. I discovered that students can have fun writing (just don't let on to the students that it is fun), and suddenly they are writing more, and "wal-la" they are writing better.

So in summer school at Carson High the "F" word was put back into English. With no one to criticize that students were not getting enough grammar practice, sentence structure, or vocabulary lessons, the summer school students completed three hours of English every day reading and writing and having fun. They wrote in journals. They wrote food essays. They wrote food poems. They made food picture books for little kids. They even wrote a researched food cookbook. And in between all this writing, they read short stories and essays dealing with food.

NSEA representatives from all over the state attended the Nevada State Education Association Summer Leadership Conference at the Cal-Neva Lodge July 27 - 29 at Lake Tahoe.Elaine Lancaster, President, gave the welcome speech and introductions. A conference overview was presented by Dick Wilson, Deputy Executive Director. After lunch a very funny, tone-setting presentation "Positively Humor", by Craig Zablocki, smoothly eased participants into three days of two and/or four hour sessions. Issue sessions included such topics as Legal Trends; National Board for Professional Teaching Standards/Nevada Professional Standards Committee; Special Education; Attendance & Truancy/Discipline; and Diversity Training/Cultural Differences. On Monday afternoon I attended the School-To-Work issues session presented by Kathleen Forosini, Director of the School-To-Work Programs, Clark County School District. (The Program has been renamed School-To-Careers).She presented a comprehensive plan for programs preparing our children for careers after high school.The plan is based on what work requires of schools in terms of workplace know-how. The plan is composed of five competencies and a three-part foundation of skills and personal qualities that are needed for solid work performance.

Workplace competencies are:

• Resources — Knowing how to allocate time, money, materials, space and staff.
• Interpersonal skills — Working on teams, teaching others, serving customers, leading, negotiating, and working well with people from culturally diverse backgrounds.
• Information — Acquiring and evaluating data, organizing and maintaining files, interpreting and communicating, and using computers to process information.
• Systems — Understanding social, organizational, and technological systems. Monitoring and correcting performance, and designing or improving systems.
• Technology — Selecting equipment and tools, applying technology to specific tasks, and maintaining and troubleshooting equipment.

Foundation Skills — competent workers in the high performance workplace need:

On Tuesday I attended the four-hour New Leader Training presented in an interesting and informative manner by Joe Furtado, NSEA Organization Specialist; Randy Cahill, NSEA Organization Specialist; and Wes Peterson, WCTA Organization Specialist.The beneficial training provided both a wealth of material for recruiting new members and for becoming effective, knowledgeable representatives. Throughout the presenters stressed the duties and responsibilities of Association representatives. In the afternoon I attended Contract Maintenance also presented by Joe Furtado, NSEA Organization Specialist; Randy Cahill, NSEA Organization Specialist; and Wes Peterson, WCTA Organization Specialist.The somewhat overwhelming technical material was presented in an exciting and concise manner.Emphasis was clearly placed on the responsibilities of the Association representatives in terms of contract maintenance beginning with investigatory interviews and carrying through grievance procedures. The attendees were left with a real sense of responsibility and lots of reading to finish.Tuesday night at King's Beach overlooking the lake, we enjoyed a group dinner, dancing and spirited conversation; to make the night even more special, we celebrated Elaine Lancaster's birthday.The closing session highlighted three speeches beginning with President, Elaine Lancaster, speaking on AFT/NEA Unity; Federal Legislation: "The Fights We Face" was presented by Ken Lange, Executive Director; and "The New Look of Campaign '98: How You Fit In, The Integral Part You Play" presented by Debbie Cahill, Director of Government Relations.

Nevada State Education Association Women's Leadership Training Program - "Personal Assessment Leadership Skills" (PALS) was presented by Carolyn Webber, Dana Galvin and Dianne Hanson at the Cal-Neva Lodge at Lake Tahoe on July 30 - 31. This excellent two-day workshop started out with an evaluation of the participants self-esteem. After the evaluation, the next two days involved exercises in time management, assertive behavior, effective communication, stress awareness, learning about the structure of the Union, and a chronology of significant events in the history of the NSEA.The ending exercises put into practice what we had learned utilizing decision making and action planning exercises.The learning took place in an environment of fun and camaraderie among the women present. I feel the goal of the Women's Leadership Conference was to show the way for us to become "Key Makers".

The NSEA under the umbrella of the Women's Leadership Training also offers four additional training courses besides PALS.

They offer:

• Personal Leadership Skills (PLS) which addresses values, doing what we really believe is important;
• Groups Process Skills (GPS) where participants work in groups to listen to the content and feeling behind other people's words in order to form a meaning, and to learn to be inclusive leaders;
• Organizational Analysis Skills (OAS) for experienced leaders to learn about power. What is it? How to obtain it? How to use it in a positive way in decision making?
• Campaigning to Win (CTW) for those who would like to manage a campaign or who would like to run for office themselves particularly on a national level.

The 1998 NEA Representative Assembly (RA) was held in July in New Orleans, LA. The dominating issue and decision before the RA delegates was the proposed "Principles of Unity," the framework document negotiated by the NEA and the American Federation of Teachers to unify the two organizations. An intense, two-hour debate took place on July 4. Nearly 10,000 delegates listened hard as arguments pro and con rolled back and forth on the convention hall floor. Their decision the next day to reject this proposal, by a 58 to 42 percent margin, lead to a new business item the next day outlining how unity with the AFT should be pursued. After a vigorous three-hour debate, this new business item on the future of unity passed. This action, not nearly as well-reported by the nation's media as the vote on the Principles of Unity the day before, establishes a procedure to set guidelines for those state affiliates who want to unite with their AFT counterparts. Several states - Minnesota, Montana, Florida, and New Mexico - are at various stages in developing unification agreements. As a part of the unity action delegates voted to encourage the NEA and AFT to continue their "no-raid" agreement that's designed to discourage representational battles between local affiliates of both unions. The New Business Item action passed by RA delegates also directs the Association to continue the efforts of the AFT/NEA Joint Council, launched last fall, to enhance teacher quality, improve school safety and discipline, and modernize America's school buildings.The language of the RA New Business Item on unity can be found on the NEA Web site at www.nea.org/ra/ra98/unitynbi.txt. For the latest unity news, check the WEB at www.nea.org/unity."New Roads to Excellence" was the theme for this year's Representative Assembly, and delegates reinforced the Association's commitment to quality teaching and learning with overwhelming support for new resolutions on teacher preparation and professional development. In a strongly worded policy, delegates called for clinical practice for prospective teachers, similar to residencies in the medical profession. Delegates also called for strengthening teacher professional development programs and approved new actions on outlining professional development for educational support personnel throughout their careers.Language for these New Business Items can be found at www.nea.org/ra/ra98/nbi98.html.

www.stw.ed.gov/ —National School-To-Work Office

www.ascd.org/ — Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development

www.nea.org/gem/ — For quality education materials, Gateway to Educational Materials has thousands of lesson plans, curriculum guides, and many other resources. You can customize your search using subjects, keywords and grade levels.

www.nea.org/helpfrom — Provides useful tools to improve public schools by offering concrete teaching strategies to reliable analyses of education's most controversial topics.

There's no one magic skill or idea that makes a teacher great. It's the 1,001 large and small actions that teachers do every day.

Great teachers excel in:

• piquing students' interests
• energizing lesson plans
• organizing their classrooms
• cutting through the administrivia

Works4Me shares those 1,001 concrete tips and strategies - all offered by great teachers - your peers. You can subscribe to Works4Me, NEA's free e-mail tip of the week by simply typing this e-mail message:

• In the "to" line: lyris@listnea.org
• In the message block, type ONLY: Subscribe Works4Me:
• Send the message.

In the coming year, I would like to see the Quest continue to grow and at the same time serve several important functions for the teachers of the Carson School District. First to provide current information on OCEA activities; second to provide information that will lead to professional growth for all OCEA members; and third to provide everyone with information on the innovative and exciting activities that are taking place in your classroom.To accomplish these goals, I need your help. I encourage all school site Association representatives and all OCEA members to remember this is your newsletter. Member input is needed to make the Quest a success. Some suggestions for articles are: current activities at your school, opinion letters, summaries of professional journal articles, etc., summaries of State and National Conventions attended by Association delegates, and WEB sites that are useful to you.You can contact me at Carson High - 885-6500, at home - 884-2751 or by E-mail at kselect@kselect.carson-city.nv.us. I look forward to hearing from you.