President's Message

By Dr. Connie Weiner
WAMLE President

In preparation of my new role as your WAMLE President, I attended the National Middle School Leadership Summit in Austin, Texas. It was a rewarding experience working with affiliate leaders, who are all passionate about middle level education, from across the nation.

WAMLE is a small, yet growing affiliation and we are fortunate to have strong support from the National Middle School Association. As a matter of fact, Sue Swaim, who is NMSA's executive director, spoke of WAMLE's emergence during her keynote presentation. She praised Washington State for its commitment to middle level education and the progress we have made as a new affiliation! My thanks go out to all of you, the middle level educators who support our affiliation and who have helped us in reestablishing a voice for middle level education in our beautiful state.

Our goal is to continue to recruit middle level educators and to continue to evolve as a powerful force for middle level education. To better serve you, WAMLE's board members are in the process of developing a WAMLE website, which should be up and running within the next month. We are also proud to announce that NMSA is coming to Washington State to hold a 2-day Workshop in April, 2007. We will keep you posted on this workshop as well as on other workshops and conferences.

Please let me know if there is anything our affiliation can help you with in your pursuit to do what is best for your students and your school. I believe that by working together we can make great things happen in our schools.

On a personal note, I have been a middle school advocate and teacher for a number of years. Currently, I am the program chair for middle level education at Central Washington University. We are offering a middle school endorsement program for math and science and we are in the process of submitting the paperwork for the new middle level humanities and social studies endorsement program. This is an exciting time at CWU to promote middle level education to all of our pre-service teachers.

It is my great pleasure to have the opportunity to work with you. Our present challenge is to continue to give our middle level voice greater strength in numbers. The more we come together as a group, the greater change we can bring about for our young adolescents and the quality education that develops their skills and talents to the fullest.