As another school year draws to a close, NSTA launches two new blog series: Why Membership Matters and Making the Most of Your Membership. Debuting this month, these series will go into detail on how NSTA member benefits can help you throughout your career.

Science teachers face unique challenges as educators, and Why Membership Matters will feature a series of interviews with NSTA members. We’ll present specific ways that NSTA membership has helped science teachers address those challenges. We’ll talk about issues such as:

• How can I integrate science with my other subjects?
• I’m a new teacher, and I need help!
• How do I deal with controversial topics in my classroom?
• How do I teach science well within my classroom time constraints?
• How do I continue to teach science effectively with a reduced budget?

We’ll begin posting these interviews this month and look forward to hearing from you about what challenges you continue to face and how NSTA can help you with them.

We know that our members have limited time to engage with NSTA and we want to help you with that. From a recent study, we know that our members have approximately two to five hours per month to interact with their membership and to take advantage of all the member benefits. In Making the Most of Your Membership, we’ll present several ways that you can break that time down into manageable chunks. If you find yourself with more time, we’ll present you with some additional options for deeper involvement. Each suggested activity will have a time indicator, so you’ll know how to work this into your busy schedule. We hope that we’ll be able to help you make the most of the time you spend with us.

We’ll begin publishing these posts this month and look forward to your feedback and suggestions.