The Adviser | October 2015
Family, Career and Community Leaders of America, Inc. ®
The Adviser is published by Family, Career and Community Leaders of America, Inc.® as a recognition and resource tool for chapter advisers. Sandy Spavone
Executive Director
Ashley Pournaras
Communications Manager
Caitlin Osbourne
Communications and Membership Assistant
Josh Bowar
Editoral Consultant
Julie Kettner
Design Consultant
The Adviser may be reprinted, excerpted, or photocopied accompanied by the following statement: Reprinted with permission from The Adviser, Family, Career and Community Leaders of America, Inc.® We welcome comments, suggestions, and reports. Send to The Adviser at: National FCCLA 1910 Association Drive Reston, VA 20191-1584 (703) 476-4900 • FAX (703) 860-2713 www.fcclainc.org Email: inbox@fcclainc.org
Leadership Notes Welcome back, advisers! As we wrap up a very exciting summer, we are so excited about the 2015-2016 school year and the fantastic opportunities that this year will hold for Family and Consumer Sciences and FCCLA. This is a fantastic time for Career and Technical Education and the work of Family and Consumer Sciences. The time for the focus to be on the family and preparing our youth for success in their careers and communities has never been more clear and relevant both in and out of the classroom. As we focus on the theme EMPOWER/MEPOWER this year, we know that the power to empower is within you, our FCCLA chapter advisers. The 2015 National Leadership Conference hit a new record in attendance with nearly 8,000 attendees. As we celebrated FCCLA’s 70th anniversary with a “Seventy Years Strong” rally on Capitol Hill, youth and advisers rallied to showcase the power of Family and Consumer Sciences education and FCCLA. We were honored to have several notable speakers and proud of our youth who blanketed every office in both the House and Senate with informational visits. On July 8, FCCLA was complimented on the floor of a House Session for the polite behavior of our members and their powerful CTE message. We are grateful for all who made the investment of time and funds to be part of the 2015 National Leadership Conference and hope to see many of you in San Diego in July 2016. I hope you have had a chance to review or attend a workshop on the newly updated Student Body program. As we work to update the FCCLA programs, we began with Student Body, and many of you assisted us in determining the topics to cover as well as serving as volunteer subject matter experts. Through your assistance and insight, we built a new resource that includes lesson plans, peer-to-peer education ideas, brand new topics and data, and crosswalks to STEM and FACS national standards. Be sure to watch the daily Fast Facts newsletters for highlights about this new program. After our first year with the new affiliation database, we learned what worked (and worked well) and which parts of the system that we need to improve. When you log back in to affiliate your chapter this year, we hope you find a great system that is even better than last year and a database that assists us all in tracking our membership and growing our outreach and impact from where we are now to a stronger membership record. Please be sure to look at the new tab that includes your state’s dates and rates as well as your state adviser contact information. We are continuing to build the membership database to be more robust and meet the needs of FCCLA. Another project updated this year was the FCCLA website. The new site is mobile friendly and provides current information and continuous social media updates. We hope that you find the site easy to navigate and useful in and out of your classroom. Additionally, the FCCLA 365 app is the mobile resource that is used not only for conferences and meetings but also throughout the year for Teen Times and other essential resources. Be sure to download the app from your phone’s app store and encourage your members to do the same. Finally, we are excited to announce a new opportunity just for FCCLA chapter advisers. We are piloting two Chapter Adviser Summits that will be held at FCCLA national headquarters in Reston, VA, in October and February. The dates and details on how to register are listed in the Fast Facts newsletters. We hope you are able to attend! Each meeting will be on a first-come basis, capped at 40 attendees, to help us navigate and build a professional development opportunity specifically for FCCLA chapter advisers. So get ready for an exciting year, and be sure to share your chapter’s highlights by sending photos and captions to communications@fcclainc.org so we can spotlight your chapter. I hope this year is full of opportunities for each of you to EMPOWER your members and take the time to invest in MEPOWER, too! I admire each of you and hope to get to meet many of you throughout this year. Sandy Spavone Executive Director
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