The month of March proved to be an eventful one at ARI in the area of educator outreach. With the goal of increasing awareness of ARI’s Free Books to Teachers and Essay Contest programs, representatives from the Institute attended two national conferences aimed at high school teachers, administrators and school board members.

Funded by the generous support of ARI contributors, the Free Books program has enabled the Institute to distribute more than three million copies of Ayn Rand’s novels to teachers in the United States and Canada. In addition, ARI runs three essay contests for students, annually awarding over $100,000 in prize money. Since 1985, more than 350,000 students have participated in ARI’s essay contests.

The 75th annual conference and exposition for the National School Boards Association (NSBA) was held in Nashville, Tennessee, Saturday, March 21, through Monday, March 23. ARI attended the conference for the fourth consecutive year to establish connections with leaders at the district level. The NSBA represents state school boards associations and more than 90,000 school board members, presenting an ideal forum to build key relationships and promote ARI’s teacher programs. Throughout the course of the three-day conference, ARI engaged attendees from across the country and shared details about student scholarship opportunities and free classroom books and resources.

ARI also had a presence at the 70th annual conference of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) in Houston, Texas. The ASCD provides professional development services and products to support educators and comprises superintendents, principals, teachers and professors from more than 138 countries around the world. While there, ARI spoke with many attendees who had little to no awareness of the Institute’s programs prior to the conference.

Over five hundred review copies of Rand’s novels were distributed to educators and more than 350 people expressed interest in ARI programs by signing up to receive regular updates from the Institute. ARI plans to return to both conferences in an ongoing effort to encourage greater awareness of Ayn Rand’s ideas in classrooms throughout the United States.

To learn more about ARI’s educator programs, visit AynRand.org/educators.