You can enhance the following activities from the Instructor's Resource Manual by incorporating the resources available on the World Wide Web.

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards

The Instructor's Resource Manual suggests:
Have students examine the NBPTS web site and present a flow chart that illustrates the necessary steps for a teacher to receive national certification from the NBPTS. Have students describe the strengths and weaknesses of the process to achieve certification from the national board.

In addition, you may want to try inviting a teacher who has completed the process and received national board certification to speak to your class. The NBPTS web site lists the names and locations of certified teachers:

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards
As described in your textbook, this professional practice board now offers certification to exemplary teachers in forty different specialty areas.

Collective Bargaining

The Instructor's Resource Manual suggests:
After verifying that area school districts participate in collective bargaining, have students research local papers to find articles that report on the issues that have been points of contention in past collective bargaining negotiations. Another option could be to invite representatives from local teachers' organizations and school boards to discuss these issues during class or as an outside panel discussion. Students should create charts that highlight the issues and the positions taken by the board of education and the teachers' organization and then identify their own positions on the various issues.

If your area district does not participate in collective bargaining, or there has not been much news lately, you may want to modify this article to have students conduct a media search on the web. They can access a variety of media at the Newslink site:

Newslink
This site, associated with the American Journalism Review, provides links to newspapers, magazines, and television stations all over the world.

NEA and AFT

The Instructor's Resource Manual suggests two activities:

• Invite a representative from the NEA and/or the AFT to talk about the merits of joining a teacher organization. This person could be a teacher who is the current president of the teacher's association in an area school district. Also discuss how the two teacher organizations have helped improve the status of the profession.
• In a position paper, students must choose to defend the merits of merging the NEA and AFT or the merits of these two organizations remaining separate.

You might be able to find your local representative through the NEA or AFT web sites. The organizations' web sites are also good places for students to gather information if you choose to assign them to write a position paper.

National Education Association

American Federation of Teachers

Parent-Teacher Organizations

The Instructor's Resource Manual suggests:
Have the presidents of the PTA from several area schools come to class to discuss their purpose and activities in local schools.

You can find contact information for local schools by using the National Center for Educational Statistics' "School Locator" at their web site, or you can find your local PTA chapters through the Community page of the National PTA web site:

National Center for Education Statistics

National PTA