October President's Update

By Drew Barnes, Vale School District

Greetings Fellow NACAT Members,

I don’t know about you, but I love fall! The weather is changing, football season is upon us, and it is no longer the very beginning of the school year! Not that it means we are any less busy, but at least we are settling into a routine and making great progress with new and returning students alike. I am hoping that each of you are finding success and enjoying this new school year. If you are in need of anything as an automotive educator, whether you are a new teacher or have been doing it for years, please feel free to reach out to NACAT. As our motto says “For Automotive Teachers, By Automotive Teachers”, remember we are here as an organization to help fellow automotive educators be successful. If we as the officers, board of directors, or business managers can’t answer your questions or provide you with exactly what you need, we can definitely put you in contact with someone who can. With that being said, if you are in need of more resources for your educational toolbox, please check out the NACAT website. When you login with your membership credentials, you will have access to the member resources. There you will find a training library, video links for past roundtable discussions, and a teacher resources page (which we are continuing to update frequently). The teacher resources section has continued to grow and is being accessed more and more. You can find lots of helpful documents, newsletters, and some really helpful lesson plans. Also, on the NACAT website, members have access to our complete membership directory. This allows you to get the contact information for any automotive instructor or industry partner that is a NACAT member, you can narrow down your search by name, company name, school, or location. Even if you don’t have questions, but you have great ideas or lessons that you are wanting to share with other educators, please reach out to us as well. We would love to see our teacher resources page grow into a vast library of information that can be quickly and easily accessed by our members when they are in need. I know that when I was a new teacher, fresh out of industry, I appreciated all the help I could get!

As I conclude with this update, I would just like to remind everyone to mark out the dates on their calendars for the 2025 NACAT Conference: June 9-12, 2025 in Detroit, MI. It is hard to believe that in just a few months, we will be opening up registration for the 2025 conference. We plan to have registration open shortly after the new year, so be on the lookout for those notifications. This is going to be a great conference, we are very excited to be able to host this event in Detroit. In the meantime, keep checking those inboxes, follow, and share our posts on social media. Also, if you have any colleagues or fellow educators that are not NACAT members or have never been to a NACAT Conference, please let them know who we are and what we are all about. We would love to have them join us! Lastly, if you have the time, please consider joining us in some of our mentor roundtable discussions. The topics and dates for those events are located on our homepage.