A Salute to Education and Educators
It's a new year and so we begin a new school term and it's a good time to talk about education. Education is the cornerstone of the ADAA and always has been.
In the course of our history, we developed the accrediting process for dental assisting schools which is now administered by the Council on Accreditation of the American Dental Association. We went on to develop the Certifying Board of the ADAA which tested the experience and knowledge of dental assistants and then added the requirement of continuing education for re-certification and then we spun this off to become the Dental Assisting National Board allowing us to concentrate our efforts on continuing education and developing recognition for the professional dental assistant.
As we have grown, so many of those who have supplied leadership and countless hours of service to the profession have been identified as educators. Our current Board of Trustees boasts many educators and I personally am a faculty member of the dental assisting program at Portland Community College (Ore.).
- We thank you for the thousands of students who you annually encourage to become student members of the ADAA.
- We acknowledge with gratitude your encouragement as they develop and carry out plans for their own participation each year in the annual Dental Assistants Recognition Week sponsored jointly by ADAA, ADA, and the Canadian Dental Assistants Association and the Canadian Dental Association.
- We are proud of the editorial contributions you make to our Dental Assistant Journal and the advice and authorship you provide as we publish thousands of continuing education courses, seminars and other events.
To Educators Everywhere:
The ADAA has instituted a Fellowship/Mastership program that might fit in with your accreditation and professional development needs, and being an ADAA member will provide you with some leads for course work enhancement.
To help serve the business side of dental assisting, ADAA welcomes well known practice management expert Linda Miles whom we will be featuring throughout the year in our Journal. These are only a few of the newly added membership benefits as we enter in global diversification – come join us.
We are providing dues reduction incentives for students entering the workforce as they convert from student to active members of ADAA and we also provide Scholarships and Student Achievement recognition. Make sure you're on our mailing list to keep up to date on these items of importance to educators.
We're reaching out to educators and asking them to more closely align themselves with our educational efforts. We urge you to consider membership if you haven't already joined and to encourage your colleagues to do so too. We invite your continued participation as authors in our juried publication and urge you to consider the educational, professional and social advantages of our annual conference ... the next to be held in July in Nashville in conjunction with an international dental assisting symposium which we will host along with the Canadian Dental Assistants. The theme of our conference will be "A New Beginning" and we are hoping that all educator members – both new and soon to be – will be part of that new beginning and remain part of the ADAA: the People Who Make Dental Assisting A Profession.
ADAA president Karen Waide, CDA, EFDA can be e-mailed at l-k-waide@juno. com.
