Hello Everyone, I want to send along a couple of items that need your attention.

NAAE Membership - Please send your membership to the NAAE office as soon as possible. It is critical that you send membership along as you receive it so that members are accurately recorded as members. It is also important because the liability insurance is connected to membership being received.

ATCE National Policy Seminar - Mark your calendars for March 8-10, 2010. The NAAE will pay the registration fee for one member from each state. Region VI is close and advocacy is a critically important part of what we need to do as leaders of our association. Please designate someone from your state to attend and learn about advocacy efforts affecting all of career and technical education.

Professional State Association Awards - Congratulations to Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and New York for their awards. This is an award that EVERY state association should be applying for each year. If you have a state association, you need to use this award application as a way to evaluate your efforts to serve your members and state.

NAAE Awards PowerPoint Available ? Encourage members to apply for awards in your state by using our 2010 Awards PowerPoint.  Available online at http://www.naae.org/membership/stateleaders/

2010 NAAE Award Applications ? Award applications will be available online mid-February at http://www.naae.org/awards/applications/

2010 NAAE Internships ? NAAE is seeking interns for Advocacy and Communications.  If you have former students who are college upperclassman now that would be interested, please encourage them to apply.  Application process information can be found at http://www.naae.org/links/internships/

Updated Regional Leadership Directory ? Can now be found online at http://www.naae.org/affiliates/regionsIVI/index.html

Mark Your Calendar

2010 NAAE Convention ? Las Vegas November 30-December 4, 2010

Best wishes for a wonderful holiday season. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

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I want to thank all of you who attended this year's NAAE Convention. As a leader in your state, your attendance is extremely important at the convention and the regional summer conferences. This truly is a grass roots organization and your input is needed to make sure that we, as the Board of Directors, are addressing the issues important to this profession.

I want to congratulate the Region VI Award winners once again. It is so inspiring to hear your stories! I want to encourage you to start working on potential award applicants for this year's awards. Applications will be due in early May. I also want to encourage state professional association's to apply for those awards and set a goal to shoot for the Distinguished level this year.

I hope you found the convention workshops to be valuable professional development. The NAAE staff does a great job is coordinating over 100 workshops during the four days of the convention. I want to thank each of you who stepped up to serve as a workshop facilitator. With so many workshops happening, it is important to have someone at each and every workshop to be sure the presenter has what they need and that workshop evaluations are returned. The board will spend a portion of our winter board meeting evaluating this convention. Please feel free to send me any comments or suggestions. Next year we will be back in Las Vegas but before that we will hold our summer conference in Rockville, MD as the guest of the Maryland Association of Agricultural Educators from July 6-9. I know they will do an outstanding job and I will let you know when more information is available. Please mark your calendars now!

I hope you are excited about National Teach Ag Day. The web site is a great resource for you as you make plans. Check it out at http://www.naae.org/teachag/teachagday . Julie Fritsch and Ellen Thompson are doing a fantastic job on our "Teach Ag" campaign. We need to "TAG" our replacement and encourage our students to become agriculture teachers. It is a great profession filled with wonderful teachers who give everything they have to make a difference in the lives of their students. I know I would not want to be doing anything else.

Finally, I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. I wish you and yours a blessed holiday season and a Happy New Year! It will be a year filled with new challenges that we must address as a profession. I know we can accomplish anything if we work together.

Ken Couture

Region VI Vice President

The 2009-2010 school year has begun in earnest after another too short summer. I hope you all had some time to enjoy with family before tackling another year of teaching agricultural education. I don't know about you, but I would not want to be doing anything else. A new year brings a new crop of freshman and the return of the upperclassman. It also bring the opportunities that make teaching agriculture so gratifying.

Each year brings new lessons and new chances to have a powerful impact on the students in your program. Many times those positive impacts go unannounced and unnoticed until years down the line but they are no less important to the student.

I hope you are excited about teaching and about your professional association. Are your dues worth the investment? I absolutely believe that they are. The NAAE provides you with many benefits and it is your voice for the profession. We have an excellent staff that works extremely hard to get the most out of the resources that your dues provide. I challenge each of you to familiarize yourself with the vast array of resources that are available to you as a professional agriculture teacher.

From Communities of Practice to Webinars to advocacy resources, the website holds the links to all of these resources and many more. The NAAE website has recently had a reorganization to make it easier to locate information so check it out. Finally, it is an honor for me to serve Region VI on the NAAE Board of Directors. I have been so impressed with our staff and with the other agricultural educators who are representing their respective regions as well as President Sally Shomo and President Elect Ray Nash. It is a very dedicated group of people and I feel fortunate to be among them.

As this new year gets underway, please do not hesitate to email or call me with any concerns or suggestions. Please encourage your fellow agricultural educators to join NAAE and ACTE so we can continue to have a strong voice for our profession. Have a great year!

Hi Everyone, I am sending this out before heading off for some vacation time with my family. I will be attending the NAAE Board of Directors Meeting from July 20-22. If you have any items or issues that you would like me to share with the Board please email or call me.

*2009 NAAE Convention
HURRY--Early Bird Registration Ends July 15th
Early Bird Registration ($285) is open until July 15, 2009. NAAE MEMBERS WHO ARE ALSO ACTE MEMBERS are eligible for the ACTE member convention registration fee rates. Visit the NAAE website http://www.naae.org/convention/registration/ to find out how to register for NAAE/ACTE Convention.

Convention Housing Is OPEN!
The Opryland Hotel will house both the ACTE and NAAE conventions in 2009, unlike in past years when the NAAE Convention has been at a hotel close to the ACTE Convention.
Rooms at the Opryland Hotel will be $169 per night for single or double occupancy, plus 9.5% sales tax, 5% occupancy tax, and a $5 resort fee. The resort fee covers wireless internet access and other amenities.
To book your room for the NAAE Convention, November 17-21, either call 615-883-2211 or make your reservations online by  <https://reservations.oprylandhotels.com/cgi-bin/LANSAWEB?procfun+rn+resnet+nsh+funcparms+UP(A2560):;NAAE;?> going to http://www.naae.org/convention/housing/ and following the link provided. When booking your room by phone, you must give NAAE's group reservation code, N-NAAE, to get the NAAE Convention rate.
IF YOU ARE BOOKING 5 OR MORE ROOMS, you MUST call Kristin Childress, Group Reservations manager, at 615-871-6657 to make reservations. You must mention NAAE's group reservation code, N-NAAE, to get the NAAE Convention rate.

*State Officer Rosters
Rosters for the 2009-2010 year are due into the NAAE office by September 1st.  (attached is a form that can be filled out and submitted electronically).  Please send state officer rosters to asmith.naae@uky.edu   It can also be faxed to (859) 323-3919.

*Professional State Award Applications
Applications are due to NAAE Regional Vice-Presidents by September 1st. (attached is a form that can be filled out and submitted electronically) or the form can be found on the website http://www.naae.org/awards/applications/#N .

*NAAE on Facebook and Twitter
Become a fan of NAAE on Facebook, or follow NAAE on Twitter.  We have established a presence on both networking sites to make it easier for members to keep track of what?s going on with NAAE.

*Three Free Professional Development Webinars now available on demand
NAAE has just made three more professional development webinars available for FREE. Just download and watch the webinar, then turn in the included evaluation form to get professional development credit.
From Farm to Fork: Discover how Veterinarians Keep our Food Supply Safe From the Production to Consumer Level
Lights, Camera, Action: Using Windows Movie Maker in your Ag class or FFA chapter
Don?t Be Intimidated: Easy Ways to Integrate Biotechnology into Your Classroom
*2009 Communities of Practice Promotional Materials Available
A Powerpoint presentation and accompanying take-home quick-start sheet to help you promote Communities of Practice at your summer meetings is now available for download from our website at www.naae.org/resources#cop <http://www.naae.org/resources#cop> . You can also find  printable flyers and a 4-minute video there to help spread the word about Communities of Practice.

*NAAE Teach Ag Resources
Please continue to make members aware of the Teach Ag portion of the NAAE website.  We have a lot of good information there, including a listing of all colleges and universities in the US with ag education programs, a printable Teach Ag brochure, downloadable Teach Ag logos, ringtones, the classroom versions of ?Are You Smarter Than Your Ag Teacher,? and ?Teach Ag Feud,? and Teach Ag merchandise.  Students can also sign up there to join our Teach Ag campaign.  www.naae.org/teachag <http://www.naae.org/teachag> .

I had the great pleasure to attend the New York  Agricultural Educators at the Camp Oswegatchie Educational Center. They had a great turnout of teachers and put together a great professional development program while including plenty of fun and camaraderie. It was my first visit to Oswegatchie and I can understand how the place gets into peoples blood. It is a beautiful area. Unfortunately I was only able to be with them for a day and a night as the NAAE Region conference overlapped. Shari Lighthall and the NY staff really do an outstanding job with their conference and I look forward to them hosting the 2011 NAAE Region VI conference. Thank you to them for inviting me to attend.

With the summer comes a different schedule and our days are not punctuated by bells that mark the passing of class periods. I don't know about you but one of the things I will enjoy most about retirement (many years off) will be not hearing the bell all day!

That may make it seem to be an odd time for an advocacy issue, but one of my favorite advocacy activities has been taking my students to the Washington Leadership Conference Program. In my opinion it is one of the best leadership experiences that the National FFA Organization conducts each year. After some preparation by the conference staff, the FFA members visit Capitol Hill. But the learning experience begins for the students long before leaving for Washington D.C. My students need to contact our congressmen and senators to set up visits to their offices while at WLC. They need to identify the proper person in each office to contact and handle the call after a little coaching by me. The students tend to be somewhat intimidated at first but after the first call they usually loosen up. The actual visits are the highlight of the day. In my experience the legislators we meet are thrilled to see the young leaders of FFA and they go out of their way to make the FFA members welcome.

Now for the best part yet. Let your students use all that public speaking talent and charm to make a tremendous impression on those legislators. They can't help but be impressed, and those impressions are all important to advocacy. I suppose what I am saying is to nurture your students to be excellent advocates of our agricultural education programs. Make sure legislators understand that the FFA is part of agricultural education, not the other way around. I know I need to do a better job showcasing my FFA members as advocates at all levels of governance, from our local board of education to the halls of Congress. Maybe summer isn't such a bad time for a look at advocacy after all. Take some time this summer plan how you will showcase your FFA student leaders next school year. Better yet, why not make advocacy part of your officer retreat!

The Region VI and Six State Conference will be over by the time this issue goes to press. Many thanks to the planning committee for all your hard work. The NAAE board and staff willI hold our summer board meeting in Washington, D.C. during the third week of July. If there is anything that you would like me to bring to the board please don't hesitate to let me know. I hope you enjoy the long days of summer. Take some time for family and rejuvenation. That first bell of the new year will be ringing all too soon!