By Bobbie Margo
Since 2015, NEA has replaced “OUTREACH TO TEACH” - (remember “OUTREACH” was a school make-over in a day) with “THE LEGACY PROJECT.” “LEGACY” stands for “Leaders Empowering Grassroots Advocacy for Communities and Youth.”
This year’s project took place at the Convention Center in downtown Washington, D.C. The main source of volunteer workers came from the NEA-Student and the NEA-Retired members. This year’s T-shirt color was hot pink-a loud and lively color!
Volunteers moved from table to table every 15-30 minutes to work on community service projects like building Little Free Libraries, putting together care packages for homeless shelters, creating decorated hand puppets containing notes of inspiration for cancer patients, and “Pencils of Hope Stations,” which were letter writing stations to encourage educators to become mentors to student teachers.
All of the LEGACY projects are the perfect way to introduce future educators to how to lead hands-on projects in their classrooms. By working with retired members, it’s the perfect way to show such new educators how being an NEA member is like being part of a family.