Welcome back to a new school year, and I hope it is a good one for all the CTE teachers and your students.  I hope everyone is doing well and staying safe and healthy!  Hopefully you were able to enjoy your summer and have some quality time with your family, and get your mind of school for a while.

Fall Semester

We look forward to continued growth with renewal of memberships and new members.  Educator dues are $20 if paid by December 31st and $40 if paid January 1st or after.  Dues can be paid online by going to https://www.idea-online.org/join-idea/

Resources

I’m sure many of you are facing new challenges this school year and are looking for new technology and ideas, especially if when some of your students have to be at home learning because of quarantine or other.  Be sure to check out our resources page at: https://www.idea-online.org/links/ for ideas and resources.  Feel free to contact Brian Rick (Communications Director) at brian.rick@sic.edu with ideas you can share with others.  We still need each other no matter the pandemic or not.

Fall Conference

1.      Our annual fall conference will be full In-person this year on October 7^th & 8^th.  We will continue working in collaboration with TEAI for this fall conference. 

2.      More information will be coming as we finalize the plans, and we will update the website Friday/Sarurday Program | IDEA (idea-online.org) with the fall conference information.

3.      We are working hard to create a valuable and relevant conference that provides meaningful professional development. As experts of teaching Drafting & Design we need your help. We are always looking for new and different ways to keep our students engaged in design and drafting courses. If you are interested in presenting a session to demonstrate the new exciting activities you are doing in your classroom please use this presentation form link: https://forms.gle/YCjsKXJfQY5dUwBL7 to fill out a session proposal.

4.      In the “general session” we will be presenting our annual awards.  If you know someone you would like to nominate for our two awards there is a nomination form that will be available on our website at: https://www.idea-online.org/about-idea/awards/

*IDEA Teacher of the Year

*Friend of IDEA

*We also offer the Dr. Ryan Brown scholarship for a student attending Illinois State University and who has competed or been involved in another way (judge of contests etc.) the IDEA. 

Annual Membership Meeting

1.      Our Annual Membership Meeting is for all IDEA members.  This meeting will be virtual again this year on Thursday, November 3^rd at 4:00pm

*It will be after the fall conference so we can also hear your thoughts on this year’s conference.  Be on the lookout for that meeting date, time, and the link to join in.  We are always looking to do what is best for our students and teachers and the more involvement and ideas the better.

*We will have our annual election of executive board officers and approval of the appointed positions, so if you are interested in getting more involved with IDEA by joining the executive board, this is your opportunity.

* We also have some organizational proposed changes to our board and will want your input and vote on these.  These changes are proposed to keep the workings of our organization protected, supported, allow new board members without a majority of turn over and have double coverage for our critical areas of Education/Conference, competition, financial, communication and leadership.  The proposed changes are in this link:

Design & Drafting Education

It is currently a good time to be entering the Technology Education profession.  Tech Ed careers are expanding, and we need to continue to encourage students to enter the drafting and design fields, especially to become future educators in our field.  There have been quite a few openings in recent years that have gone unfilled.  Anything we can do to encourage a student to follow into the Technology Education field is helpful.   As our website continues to expand we are looking at adding more job openings and scholarship/program information for teachers, students, & parents.  

Thank You

Thank you for all the work you put in to educate your students whether in-person or online or both last school year.  I know these are still difficult times for keeping a full class engaged and doing what is best for all our students.  We at IDEA are so excited that we were able to hold our conference and competitions last school year and that you continue to provide drafting and design curriculum to your students!

If there is anything we can do to help you in teaching your students drafting and design please ask.  Our contact information can be found on our website at: https://www.idea-online.org/about-idea/officers/

Lastly, thank you to our board who puts in the time, effort and several google meets to make sure this organization, the conference and competition continues to run even in these uncertain times!   

Sincerely,

Jeff Brown – IDEA President