History
As stated on the official NCTE website, The National Council of Teachers of English was founded in 1911 by a group of educators in Chicago, Illinois, known as the English Round Table of the National Education Association.This group wanted to create a professional response to changing needs and values regarding education, particularly English language education. The impetus for this early effort was a concern that school curricula were becoming too narrow and were incapable of addressing the needs of an increasingly diverse student population. A special committee was formed to address these issues.Since this time the NCTE has provided a forum for English teaching professionals to continue their professional growth throughout their careers, in addition to providing a framework for cooperative action pertaining to issues that affect the instruction of English.
These concerned educators at first set themselves a limited task: to explore the problems arising from a rigid, narrowly defined approach to English language instruction. Soon, however, it became apparent that more was needed, and that only a national professional organization would have the ability to affect policy decisions. By 1919 the original investigatory committee had grown large enough to become such an organization. Because of its open-door policy regarding membership, the NCTE from the first maintained a divisional structure, with separate groups representing elementary, secondary, and postsecondary educators.
Over the next several decades the organization continued to grow. By 1948 it was clear that the simple divisions based on grade level were inadequate, and the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) was formed to address the special needs of communication and composition teachers at the college level. This reliance on committee organization proved to be extremely useful, for it permitted interested groups to concentrate their focus on particular issues or trends. Membership grew dramatically in the second half of the twentieth century, and over the years new committees were formed, leading to the five-conference structure in place at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
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