A Century of Service

Looking back at 100 years of member communications

By Kelly Hagen, NDU Communications

A century ago, the North Dakota State Teachers Association mailed a copy of its first-ever periodical, The Associated Teacher, to every teacher in the state. The association’s first executive secretary, R.L. Brown, had begun work as field secretary for the Teachers Welfare Committee on Jan. 1, 1921, concentrating on membership drives and planning for district and state conventions. By November, he added “editor” to his list of job duties.

“A monthly bulletin was started a year ago last month,” he wrote in a report to the Executive Committee in late 1922. “The purpose of this experiment was primarily to bring to the teachers of the state and the members of our Association the information we wanted them to have. I feel the experiment has proven this to be a fundamental necessity if we are to do the work we should.”

One hundred years later, a lot has changed. For one, the Association would change its name to the North Dakota Education Association, and it would grow to represent all educators in our public schools, including K-12 teachers, administrators, education support professionals, and even faculty and staff at our public universities. Membership would steadily grow, especially in the first half of the 1920s. Enrollment in 1922 stood at 3,628 annual members, and that number grew to 4,488 by the end of the decade. Membership numbers fluctuated across the years, until seeing its largest-ever enrollment after 2013, when a Representative Assembly of members of the NDEA and the North Dakota Public Employees Association voted to merge and form North Dakota United. This new organization, the state’s union for public educators and employees, currently represents approximately 11,500 preK-12 teachers, ESPs, higher education faculty and staff, city, county and state employees, retired workers and college students of education.

What hasn’t changed is the importance of joining your union.

In 2021, the united efforts of our members toward advocacy for high standards of excellence, qualification and compensation is our union’s top priority, as it was in 1921. As the years went by, NDEA was essential in establishing a pension system for educators, raising the licensing standards for teachers, increasing learning opportunities for students in the state’s cities and rural areas, organizing our public education system, gaining collective bargaining rights for K-12 teachers and elevating public sentiment toward public education and educators. NDPEA was similarly crucial to starting a pension fund for public employees, a quality health insurance plan, and in raising goodwill, morale and appreciation for public employees.

While collective action is the primary benefit of membership in ND United, many more rewards have come to be included in the past 100 years. Current members of NDU can read about all of these benefits and rewards in great detail in the 2021-22 NDU Member Handbook, which is available in print and electronically on our website, www.ndunited.org. We’ve included a short summary of these benefits in the following pages of United Voices.

On the opening page of the November 1921 edition of The Associated Teacher, President G.W. Hanna wrote: “The Association derives its financial and moral life and power and punch from memberships and participants. Every teacher is reaping manifold benefits from the association, tho (sp) membership and participation are necessary to get the greatest good and make the Association really great in what it has to give.”

In the 2021 Member Handbook, President Nick Archuleta wrote: “As we emerge from the Coronavirus pandemic, we anticipate that all public employees will experience challenges in their workspaces. … Still, I am confident that if we continue to grow, to mobilize, and to make our voices heard, we will become the transformational organization that we need to be.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same. As it was a century ago, it is our members, and your combined efforts, united voices and unified spirit, that make us all great. Here’s to 100 years of participation in this noble experiment, and many more.

Source: (The Associated Teacher, Vol. 1, No. 1 – November 1921). Elwyn B. Robinson Department of Special Collections, Chester Fritz Library, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks.