CMLA Award Winner - 2012

Georgia College and State University CMLA Chapter

Officers:
President: Casey Fortner
Vice President: Jason Trankle
Secretary: Lauren Mimbs
Treasurer: Kaitlin Ward
Historian: Meghan Manthey
Publicist: Andrew Wimpey
Campus Representatives: Ashley Cable and Jordyn Lavoie
GMSA Liaison: Chelsea Ramsey

Georgia College and State University (GCSU) has an active, growing CMLA chapter that is fully committed to the preparation of future middle level teachers. Members organize and participate in quality experiences for their own professional development including attending and presenting at state, regional, and national conferences. They demonstrate their advocacy for young adolescents through local programs; they show with special activities like the Middle Level Summit that they can consider issues relevant to teacher candidates beyond the confines of the GCSU campus; and they readily reach out to students to help organize CMLA chapters on other campuses.

Georgia College CMLA Chapter Activities:

• This chapter has cosponsored with the Professional Association for Georgia Educators to host semi-finals and finals for the statewide PAGE Academic Bowl for Middle Grades students annually for six years.
• Chapter representation and participation in the statewide GMSA Board of Directors (that puts on a large, annual statewide conference and other professional development programs throughout the year).
• The chapter has organized and led eight annual statewide Middle Level Summit conferences that now attract 200 pre-service and in-service teachers each year, plus administrators from across the state of Georgia and the Southeast.
• The chapter has organized and hosted six annual creative writing and art exhibitions that have culminated in an annual celebration of student creativity attended by parents, adolescents, teachers, and all CMLA members, held on campus during the Month of the Young Adolescent.
• Participation in a large, ambitious, community-wide Relay for Life through a Georgia College CMLA Team (teachers, students, and families from many of our area schools also have teams involved in this annual effort of generosity and solidarity).
• Family and community involvement events for five years (in more than ten different area schools from five different districts where our pre-service professionals complete their extensive field placements), including book drives, clothing drives, sponsoring families for the holidays, and fundraisers for The Boys and Girls Club.
• Partnering with a highly-successful federally-funded local after school program to foster outreach to families of the adolescents we serve in our field placements in the school district where Georgia College is located. In total, this impressive after school program is in its sixth year of multi-million dollar funding and reaches more than 600 students and employs more than 300 teachers, tutors, and volunteers; students involved have school attendance rates far higher than non-participants. The after school program focuses both on homework completion as well as enrichment.
• Monthly professional development activities at CMLA meetings, including teaching strategies, professional dispositions and expectations, ethical behavior, after school programming, and differentiation strategies to use in classrooms.
• Annual chapter attendance at GMSA and AMLE conferences.
• The chapter has a long history of participation in national CMLA programs and leadership (including serving as a previous national host site for CMLA), 2007-2009.
• Recognition as a 2011 Outstanding Chapter of CMLA by the National Association of Professors of Middle Level Education (NaPOMLE).