As an association, I truly believe ACTAA is poised for a bright future.

Since accepting the nomination for second vice president four years ago, we have made so much progress in how we provide communication instruction to students, what competition looks like, and what theatre production means in a post pandemic world. As the world continues to evolve, we have learned to be better educators, servants, mentors, and leaders for each other and our students. We have restructured the Board of Directors, invested in advocacy, and modernized our association’s process in many areas.

State of ACTAA Address - Video

As our journey together continues, I see so many other opportunities for growth in our near future. Just this weekend, we engaged in meaningful discussions about refocusing our work on promoting and advancing communication studies in the curriculum, expanding opportunities for our students, and better supporting educators at the local level with modern resources.

But just as we see opportunities, there are challenges ahead as well. We face a massive teacher shortage, and smaller membership roster in the wake of the Great Resignation. Competition for students have spurred districts to offer more extracurricular activities, creating competition for our students. Parental initiated drive for student achievement has pushed districts to offer more CTE, AP, and concurrent courses that have replaced time on schedules for electives. The growth of our sister organizations (i.e., ABA Mock Trail, Arkansas Thespians, etc.).that used to need ACTAA to operate, are now fully independent operations. All of these items influence the world which our association exists, and we must confront their impacts on our activity and seek to find new ways of advancing our work.

As I look at the horizon, I see the work we have to do that is both technical and adaptive, as the challenges before us are both technical and adaptive.

The work is the responsibility of not just the association, but you as a member as well. It will take everyone of us working together at a local and state level to realize our vision of a “future where every student in Arkansas has the opportunity to be transformed through participation in communication, debate, and theatre arts." I see this work in three categories: service, leadership, & outreach.

Services

For several years, I believe our association has been at a inflection point. Needing to answer the question, “what service do we want to provide our members?” I believe we have done good work through the DEI Taskforce, Theatre Ad Hoc, and strategic planning process to answer this question. As we look to the year ahead, we need to commit to providing more regular virtual professional development opportunities outside of conference. PD opportunities that capture the attention of our theatre colleagues, and support the hundreds of communication only teachers out there. We have to invest in our new member on-boarding process. Asking ourselves how to automate, engage and support new members that join outside of conference. And, what valuable resources can we provided educators. We annually talk about slapping conference presentation slides on the website, but how can we truly provide quality useful resources to everyday teachers to improve their classroom?

Some work has already been done to address ACTAA services to members. Since accepting the presidential gavel, we have completely restructured the website to better support members. We are investing in our Student Advisory Board; committing to provide leadership opportunities and training for the students to grow as captains and leaders in their communities. And, the Board adopted new opportunities for ACTAA to help you advocate for your students and tell the story of your program through additional student recognition. At Fall Conference, the Board approve to offer All-State and Academic All-State designations this year and developed an award system for a student to receive national recognition through the NFHS Heart of the Arts award program.

Leadership

Realizing this and our larger vision of speech, debate, & theatre in every school, will take leadership. Leadership from the Board, leadership from our officers, but also leadership from you – our members. Like I have mentioned, it will take every one of us working together at a local and state level. I know we are all busy and its not easy managing 4-7 preps plus a team or production on your own. But, if this business is important and critical for our students and the state, as we like to say it is, we each have to make a commitment to attend committee meetings regularly, keep each other accountable in our volunteer roles, and show up when input and feedback is solicited.

I don’t ask the membership anything more than I have asked of myself or the Board. This summer, the Board agreed to new rules to hold itself accountable. And, this weekend we committed to meeting bi-monthly as opposed to traditionally 2-3 times a year. We understand that our vision takes work, and we have to become accountable to the work in real time. Additionally, this weekend the Board adopted the new "ACTAA in Action” Strategic Plan. The plan outlines a series of initiatives and action items that prioritize and guide work of the membership on how each discipline, each community, and each member can contribute to achieving our vision.

Outreach

Although, I believe we must commit ourselves to the work, we can’t engage in the business of transforming the lives of every student in Arkansas through communication education alone. We have to reach outside of our current membership to attract new members and partners to help us advance the work. I challenge us to commit real time into exploring how can we reach new teachers entering our fields? How to connect with existing teachers in our disciplines that feel alone in their building an content area? How can we better support teachers in the school we already have members, but perhaps don’t serve every teacher in our subjects as well?

As we work on answering these questions, the Board has made real investments in seeking strategic partners to help empower, equip, and champion our mission & vision with us. This summer, the Board approved a sponsorship program that will allow us to fundraise to better support our activities and have a purse that will allow us to expand our work. We have reorganized how we communicate with members and outside audiences with streaming our newsletter and media releases. We hope these efforts better gain traction with media outlets. And, we have invested in a plan for social media so our work is not just promoted two times a year with student congress and state, but year around.

As we live out the next year, I challenge every member to ask how you can do a little more advance how ACTAA serves, leads, & outreaches.

I know there is a lot of work ahead, but if we continue to commit to work for “future where every student in Arkansas has the opportunity to be transformed through participation in communication, debate, and theatre arts," than the future of ACTAA is bright as we equip the next generation of leaders to think, speak, and act for a brighter future.

Yours for better discourse,

Zackery Tucker, ACTAA President