Welcome to the Ventura Unified School District! I’m glad you’re here!
This page is to help you understand who the Ventura Unified Education Association is, what we do, and what your membership means.
First off, here’s the link to join the VUEA. Spoiler alert, it’s the CTA join link, as we are affiliated with the California Teachers Association (CTA) and the National Education Association (NEA).
CTA Member Benefits highlights! – this is cool stuff you can do and save with when you become a member!
Email Sarah: president@vuea.net
The VUEA is the LOCAL union for our 800 members. We are chartered under the California Teachers Association, which is affiliated with the National Education Association. VUEA was chartered in 1966; we are in our 55th year of working for kids and families and educators.
For ten months each year, VUEA/CTA/NEA members have dues pulled from their pay, pre-tax. Here’s where the fees go:
| Association | Monthly Amount | Yearly Amount |
| VUEA | $25.00 | $250.00 |
| California Teachers Association | $76.80 | $768.00 |
| National Education Association | $20.40 | $204.00 |
| Total | $122.20 | $1222.00 |
What was the best thing someone told you in your first weeks of teaching?
1. Don’t be afraid to ask for help
2. Good enough is good enough.
3. Focus on relationships and routines over complex lesson plans. Model and teach it to students and have them practice. Make your rules super clear, simple, and enforce the consequences the same every time. And tell the students why your lesson matters, or maybe what about it is exciting or interesting to you explicitly
4. Trust yourself and your instincts. Seek help whenever you need it about anything and remember that your classroom is your classroom. You’re in charge of the climate and you can lean on veteran teachers for ideas when you feel lost
5. It will get easier
6. Never be afraid to ask for help. If another teacher has introduced themselves, or seems pleasant, reach out. We were all there sometime
7. Be flexible in lesson planning because of fire drills, assemblies, covid schedule changing etc
8. No one knows what they are doing the first weeks, months of school. Don’t stress if you only make it through morning circle time and that’s it for 2 months (mod/severe sped teacher here!)
9. Try not to take work home
10. If you show your students that you respect them and their individual stories you will quickly gain their respect, which, in teaching, translates to students who respect your rules and expectations and want to do their best for you
11. Ever year is different and every year gets easier
What one thing gave you hope?
1. Supportive staff all around me
2. Giving kids a kind teacher is more impactful than perfectly planned lessons. They need you, not the lesson
3. Colleagues stopping by my classroom to introduce themselves, especially as someone coming to the school site mid-year. Inviting me to sit next to them at my first few meetings and trainings. Having someone who was not in the office that I could ask random questions
4. There will always be students in your room that want help and will be grateful when you give them help. When you trust them, they will learn to trust you
5. You will ALWAYS see at least one student’s smile and know that we are all here to make a difference in their lives. Sometimes you don’t see it every day, but it’s happening every second
6. All the positive feedback from admin, mentor teacher, peers, superintendents
7. Seeing newer and more experienced teachers working together one showing content the other showing how to use technology
8. Seeing my students begin to trust me made me trust myself more
9. Other teacher’s checking in with me regularly to make sure I was doing ok
10. Knowing I wasn’t alone-I had a great team
11. Mr. Merk, the long-haired math teacher next door with beautiful plants in his room
What was the most practical thing someone told you?
1. You don’t have to do it all at once
2. Give yourself jobs throughout the week, rather than all the jobs everyday
3. Be nice to yourself and remember to allow mistakes
4. Read the book Classroom Management for Art, Music, and PE – it’s a quick read but the advice is very straightforward and immediately useful
5. Weekends are yours. You can leave school work at school. You need to create a balance
6. Don’t be afraid to say, “I don’t know.” Because you don’t, and you can find out really quite quickly and ask for a moment while doing do.
7. Your grade level will always be there to help you. whenever you have a question go to them – use them as much as you can to gain experience during your first year
8. Have a box/bin/whatever of back up games/puzzles/activities for when the internet/technology goes out because it will
9. Keep every parent reach out documented on Siras for IEPs scheduling
10. Ask.For.Help.
11. Time Saver: When grading multiple pages of an assessment or essay, keep track of points per page on the bottom right corner of each page, and then when you’re finished grading, you only have to add up the totals at the bottom of each page. Works on paper or with online docs and slides
12. You don’t have to grade everything
13. Don’t be afraid to tell parents you’ll get back to them with the answer they are looking for later if you don’t know the answer right away
14. You’re not going to be this rockstar teacher your first year of teaching. Just do your best
15. Where all the best bathrooms on campus are. Don’t laminate everything
LEAST practical teaching advice
1. My first year mentor who thought that answering my questions with a question was helpful
2. “You should get your master’s!”
3. Not to involve parents
4. You’ll figure out SIRAS without doing the training (they changed the date and time of the training and I was not notified)
5. You don’t have any experience in this position and we need someone who knows what they are doing
6. “You’ll be fine”
7. When other teachers tried to tell me about a student I have yet to meet. Your experience with the student will not be the same as theirs and it only makes you nervous and treat the student differently
8. Someone recommended group activities for the students of the emotional disturbances program I was teaching when I inquired about how to ease the existing tension and conflicts between them
9. “You should just know”
10. Grade papers immediately
11. That THE most important thing was to have awesome classroom management that was consistent and flawless, without any examples or definition of what the heck that meant
12. To make things “pretty”
If you could go back to that time, what would you do differently?
1. Stress less and finish one thing at a time, celebrate little victories
2. Leave as close to on time as possible everyday. I don’t get that time back with my family and I don’t feel like it made that big of a difference
3. I would have paid more attention to my statistics class for my education specialist credential
4. Simplify my classroom expectations, and to not keep tweaking them – it made it confusing for the students and confusing for me to enforce
5. Have more specific rubrics for grading so I wasn’t trying to grade every single mistake
6. Learn about school politics and how it works
7. Relax and let my personality come out sooner/more. It’s why I was hired! It’s why YOU were hired too
8. not spend every single weekend in my classroom my first year. self care is important too. everything will get done!
9. Never have a power struggle with a student. People will explode when they feel cornered. DE-ESCALATE!
10. Do more self care and actually left during my contracted hours
11. Be more forgiving to myself on the hard days and to be more structured in the direction I gave my para educators
12. Set up an organization system at the very beginning of the year with all important due dates either digitally or IN PENCIL
If you could go back to that time, what would you say to yourself?
1. Breathe you’re doing great
2. Be kind and take some time every weekend to decompress and remember you are human
3. Eat lunch with your colleagues in the staff lounge or in their classroom even if you feel totally overwhelmed and not up for it
4. You were meant to be a teacher. You are going to help a lot of kids get better today. That’s a beautiful thing
5. It’s not all going to be perfect. Give yourself grace
6. Each day, each week, each month it gets easier and easier. With the tools and skills to back it up
7. You do not need to keep all of the office/school supplies you come across. They’re will before opportunities to get the things you need
8. QTIP: Quit Taking It Personally
9. It’s hard, REALLY hard…and teaching in the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 school years as a first time teacher will be beyond HARD. But you will see huge growth with your students and with yourself. YOU CAN DO THIS! You WILL do this!
10. Enjoy this, you won’t be a teacher forever
11. Your career is only one part of who you are. At the end of the day it’s a job. Education is a calling, but there is more to life than work so set your boundaries with your time off the clock and guard them
What was the one thing you BOUGHT that was really useful/helpful/life saving?
1. A planner / check lists
2. Printer for my room for quick print jobs when I think of something last minute
3. A tile for my work keys so I can beep them when I lose them
4. A daily planner…and wine…mostly the wine
5. A good planner
6. Black slacks. Nordie’s. Spared no expense
7. A keurig/tea kettle
8. Good pens!
9. Online tools: Screencastify, Kami, Canva, Slides.go, Google Flat Icon Add-On
VUEA is here to support the educators (counselors, nurses, speech and language pathologists, teachers and teacher-librarians) of the Ventura Unified Education Association. We are 800 educators strong, and we use our strength to improve teaching and learning. We work closely with VUSD to give the very best to the students and families of Ventura.
VUEA:
- Supports you by speaking for you to your site and district administration.
- Supports you by negotiating on your behalf for better benefits, smaller class sizes, higher salaries and more.
- Supports you by sponsoring your attendance at a variety of valuable teacher conferences and workshops.
- Supports you by standing with you during difficult administrative meetings.
- Supports you by listening to your concerns and helping to bring about change on your behalf.
- Supports you by providing opportunities to meet with other members in professional and social settings
- Supports you by offering scholarships to your dependents, moving on from high school to higher education.