NETA Re-Charges My Teacher Battery by Evi Wusk, Ed.D.

NETA Re-Charges My Teacher Battery by Evi Wusk, Ed.D.

The first time a student Googled an answer to my classroom question on their phone and turned around to tell me their answer, I felt like I’d stepped into a Brave New World. That was 2006.  It was also the year I discovered a key part of my educational and professional home at NETA. I remember being struck by the energy of NETA.  It was and is where the zesty, curious teachers gather—the ones eager to innovate, engage students in new ways, and never teach the same lesson twice. Sure, passionate teachers exist all over, but NETA is this boiled-down distillation, like the best kind of tomato sauce: concentrated, full of flavor, and maybe a little spicy.  NETA has always had that similar high-concentration of awesomeness for me.

Since then, I’ve returned many times to the conference and events, forming connections with educators across Nebraska and beyond. It has become a hub of relationships, learning, aliveness, and curiosity for me. I get nostalgic remembering packed sessions at Embassy Suites in Omaha, then finding our footing at the CHI Center during my first board term, and the new energy at our conference in Kearney.

Three things across these twenty years of teaching, some things remain constant, no matter how things change.  One of those is how I always learn something at NETA. Sometimes it’s a session; sometimes it’s a connection online or a nugget from a Substack. I heard it said at a bar one time that, “The world starts and ends in Southeast Nebraska.”  The educational world for me here in the Midwest might just start and end with NETA.  After all this time, it has a heartbeat for me.  

We’ve swung between viewing technology as a panacea, as mere tools, or as a lens for student expression. The truth? It’s all of it—and it shapes how we navigate our own Brave New Educational World of today.  From the start, I’ve been most curious about technologies that make us more human, not less. I still am.  And I still value the analog part to all of this—the sitting with colleagues doing the messy, beautiful work of learning together and finding ways to engage a new batch of students and connect with them. NETA has been central to that journey, and as I write that today, I guess I’m feeling thankful.

So, here’s my invitation: share this with a new teacher. I can’t honestly tell you how I got to that first NETA conference.  But I have a sense that it was because someone invited me.  I know we’re busy.  I know we don’t have time.  But I also know that NETA has charged my batteries on more than one teaching days–and what teacher couldn’t use that?  Even as our organization and the conference evolves, shifts location, and dazzles us with new tools, it remains a central hub of energy for educators. Invite someone new who might sign up for the NETA conference this Spring. I’ll be there, connecting with the web of people I’ve come to love and depend on in this hard and beautiful work of teaching.