You and your role in organizing a Next System Teach-In
Who are you? If you are at a school, college, or university: Are you a student? A professor? Teacher? Academic staff? Blue collar staff? If you are based in a community but not tied to schools or academia, from what standpoint are you coming to the Next System Teach-Ins process? Who you are and where you are based will be important to you in how you go about organizing your Teach-In.
If you are based on a campus you will likely want to organize your Teach-In on campus. If you are based in a community group, a (non-academic) union, or some other kind of social movement organization, you may decide to center your Teach-In in community spaces like public buildings, community centers, libraries, union halls, or congregational buildings.
Where you hold your Teach-In will affect who participates. And in either case, you may want to make an effort to bring different people from local communities and campuses together.
If you are a student, you will likely want to make sure to involve faculty and staff; if you are a member of the faculty or staff, you will surely want to involve students. And in each of these cases, you will want to use the Teach-In to strengthen your ties with community organizations, local agencies, and neighborhoods.
Similarly, if you are not at a university, college, or school, you can use your Teach-In to make connections with scholars and staff at local campuses.
You will need a local organizing team. Organizing a Teach-In is not a one-person job, it takes teamwork.
Depending on who you are and your situation, you can pick from one of several options for organizing your Teach-In:
- Teach-In Organizing Committee. Basically, this is a group of people who come together to organize the Teach-In. This might be a standalone committee set up just to organize the Teach-In, or it might be a committee of an existing organization. For instance, maybe you and your organization decide to organize a Teach-In; you would just set up an organizing committee within your organization. As an alternative, you might just set up a standalone committee – here it’s just a number of individuals. It might be called something like the “Vermont Next System Teach-In Organizing Committee.”
- Teach-In Coalition. This is a formal coalition of organizations. Individuals will also be involved, but the focus is on getting organizations to formally agree to participate. Generally a descriptive name works best – something like the “UNAM Next System Teach-In Coalition” – use the name to tell people exactly what the coalition is.
You might have some other way that you bring your team together. But however you do it, you’ll likely want some basic agreements on what you’re doing, how you will make decisions, and what will happen with the things you produce (e.g lists of contacts, registrants, technology, art, etc) through your Teach-In.
Additional information and resources: (coming soon)
>> NEXT: What a Teach-In is and what makes a Next System Teach-In special