By Amanda Kunkel
As we approach the upcoming school year and begin preparing for the start of the fall semester, NJAEA has also taken the time to set goals for our operations this year. We want to end 2025 and begin 2026 as a strong, well-organized collective of aspiring educators who can work alongside the rest of NJEA to succeed in our goals as a union.
This summer, I attended the National Education Association’s (NEA) Aspiring Educators Conference as well as the NEA Representative Assembly. I learned a lot from local and state leaders from other states and saw many different examples of both successful and struggling aspiring educator programs.
This experience taught me that almost the entire country is fighting for the same issues as New Jersey, such as ending voucher programs and offering paid student teaching—and that most of their aspiring educator programs were struggling to participate in this fight due to low membership numbers and problems with recruitment.
In order to help prevent similar issues within NJAEA, our three main goals for this upcoming year are:
- Focusing on recruitment
- Creating new local chapters
- Strengthening connections between new and existing chapters
With these goals in mind, my fellow NJAEA officers and I will be starting off strong by planning campus visits to all of our current chapters to meet our local leadership and establish strong connections.
We are also already reaching out to schools that are interested in starting chapters or affiliating existing clubs with the union. We will continue to reach out to more schools, particularly community colleges. We are lacking representation at these institutions and since our new leadership team includes students from Passaic County Community College, we are now uniquely equipped to start bringing in aspiring educators and education professionals from two-year institutions.
Once we have established chapters at community colleges, we’re planning to connect them with nearby or associated four-year schools so that we can have strong coalitions rather than isolated chapters. We would also like to hold a few regional events, such as community closets, which would also help to bring members and potential members together.
Just like the rest of the union, NJAEA is strongest when we are unified, focused and well-organized. We want to represent every part of the state and every type of student we possibly can so that we can do better work to advocate for both aspiring educators and public education at large.
We can’t wait to get back to school!
Amanda Kunkel is a student at The College of New Jersey and vice president of NJAEA.