The Massachusetts Elementary School Principals Association (MESPA), is the largest professional school administrator organization in the Commonwealth with over eleven hundred members. It has served its membership for seventy-five years and remains the only state-wide organization dedicated to the unique professional and advocacy concerns of elementary and middle school principals and other educators in Massachusetts; this includes assistant principals, assistant superintendents, supervisors and other allied members of the profession including secondary principals in certain programs.
Professional Development is the major focus of this Association and its Foundation, the Massachusetts Elementary School Principals Education Foundation (MESPEF). MESPA’s Professional Development program, administered through MESPEF, is based on the belief that principals are life-long learners who encourage professional staff development and personal growth. As such, they are responsible for advocating, planning and implementing programs and services to meet the needs of their schools’ divergent populations. MESPA and MESPEF offer individual daily programs, multi-day programs, and certification and degree programs. In 1991, the MESPA Education Center in Marlborough was opened; it is the primary site of its year-round professional development programs.
MESPA / MESPEF Recertification Plan. The MESPA/MESPEF Recertification Program consists of a series of full-day and multi-day courses and was developed to help educators meet their recertification and professional development needs as defined by the Massachusetts Department of Education and school districts.Programs are offered in keystone areas which are consistent with MESPA’s core values: Leadership - Learning - Service - Community. Some 200 days of training were provided during the 2000 - 2001 year.
Distinguished Lecture Series. The MESPA Distinguished Lecture Series is designed to address the important areas of leadership, curriculum, assessment as well as other areas. Distinguished Lecturers who have appeared in the past are: Thomas Armstrong, Mary Bigler, Marilyn Burns, Lucy Calkins, Willard Daggett, Terry Deal, Michael Fullan, Allan Glatthorn, Anthony Gregorc, Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Alfie Kohn, Jonathan Kozol, Alan November, William Pollack, Neil Postman, Joseph Renzulli, Phil Schlechty, Thomas Sergiovanni, Robert Sinclair, David Thornburg, Richard Wanderman, and Grant Wiggins.
Annual Fall Conference. This day-long conference features outstanding keynote speakers and initiates MESPA’s annual Distinguished Lecture Series.
Annual Spring Conference / Professional Development Institute. This three-day Institute features nationally renown speakers, numerous workshops on relevant topics, awards presentations, and an outstanding exhibition.
Mentoring New Principals. This program is designed to provide support to new principals and assistant principals in the implementation of the many mandates of the law that make the principalship an increasingly demanding job.
Leadership for Aspiring Principals. This five-day Institute is designed to broaden participants’ understanding of the role of the K-8 principal. An introduction to school leadership, participants engage in shared and individual activities, working with distinguished school administrators.
Boston College / MESPA Ed.D. Program in Educational Administration. This collaborative program addresses the national agenda for improving and renewing the preparation of educational leaders. The three-year, fifty-four credit Ed.D. program includes a dynamic interplay of academic courses, continuous field-based leadership development for school renewal, and action research for the improvement of learning for all children. It uses the school/district as a learning laboratory. The program combines theory and practice to develop leadership around instruction, diversity, collaboration, and change. All classes are conducted at the MESPA Education Center, and graduate credits and the degree are conferred by Boston College.
MESPA Principal Certification Program. This unique, highly-acclaimed program is designed to prepare educators for certification as elementary through secondary level principals. The only program of its kind in the United States, it is innovative both in content and delivery and meets all certification requirements of the Commonwealth. Graduate credits are provided by Northeastern University. It begins its tenth year in Summer, 2000.
Instructional Technology Specialist Certification Program (ITSCert). This highly unique program is designed to assist teachers and other educators holding a valid teaching certificate to become certified by the Massachusetts Department of Education as an Instructional Technology Specialist. This program provides participants with a broad understanding of this role within a school culture, going beyond traditional programs to provide the leadership, communication, and advocacy skills necessary to be effective within their schools or school districts. Graduate credits are provided by Northeastern University. The program will begin in June, 2001.
Technology Institute for Music Educators (TI:ME). MESPA is one of twelve sites in the nation certified to provide in-service teacher training in music technology. The programs for music educators meet the national standards approved for music educators and further meet the requirements for recertification of music educators in Massachusetts. The courses impart practical skills and knowledge to participants to allow them to integrate technology effectively into teaching and learning.
In early 1995, the MESPA Technology Center was created, partially in response to the 1993 State mandate that all schools become technologically proficient and interconnected. The Center is a state-of-the-art training facility, configured with 44 computers, each equipped with a CD-ROM, running on both MAC and PC platforms. An NT server connects them in a local area network and each can access the Internet via an ISDN line. Scanners, video cameras and other relevant equipment are available.The Technology Center is a fully functioning training site for technology training - for individuals, teams and scheduled classes and workshops. Services are provided both at the Center and in school districts. Memberships for schools and school districts are offered in order to provide assistance through sustained partnerships between the Center and schools. A major technology Literacy Challenge grant has been awarded to the MESPA Technology Center and three collaboratives for a project on Assistive Technologies. It enters its fourth year in September, 2000.Hundreds of teachers and administrators have been trained in this program. This year, the program was honored by the Smithsonian Institution and was placed in its Archives.
The MESPA Technology Center houses a growing, truly state-of-the-art software library of over 1,600 pieces of educational software and provides complimentary software services through its school memberships as well as services which may be purchased. It is one of twelve software evaluation centers across the country which have been approved by the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Further, it is the Massachusetts agent for the Partnership Plus Program, a program through Educational Resources, which provides all schools in the Commonwealth (K-12) with discounted rates on selected software titles from leading software publishers across the country.
MESPA offers a robust comprehensive curriculum of workshops that facilitates technology learning by all educators. The emphasis is on technical literacy and competency of those administrators and educators who facilitate the integration of technology into the curriculum. The workshops, emphasizing hands-on and learning by doing, are open to all educators: administrators, teachers, librarians, media center specialists, secretaries, parents, and anyone interested in learning about the efficacy of utilizing technology in the learning process.
MESPA sees this technology program as a natural extension of the quality MESPA professional development services that educators have experienced in the past. It is the logical next step in assisting administrators to improve their leadership and organizational skills and to help educators enhance and restructure the learning environment.
The MESPA Technology Center provides a comprehensive technology workshop series serving all educators: principals, teachers, superintendents, supervisors, librarians, media center personnel, secretaries, parents - anyone who has an interest in learning more about educational technology and its use in the enhancement of learning.
The curriculum is coordinated with the highly acclaimed MESPA Recertification Plan and is organized in six strands: Leadership, Management, Curriculum and Instruction, Supervision and Evaluation, Technology, and Multi-cultural and Society. The strands allow individuals and teams to select tailored paths through the curriculum which meet the needs of beginners, intermediate and advanced learners. The workshops stress hands-on and learning-by-doing methods.
The workshops are offered as three-hour, six-hour or multi-day programs, and are priced for education budgets. They are offered both on-site at the MESPA Technology Center and In-District for individual schools and school districts.
Curriculum Integration with Technology. The curriculum at the MESPA Technology Center is designed to focus on preparing students to be successful in the workplace and in society. With the proper use of technology, the role of the principals, teachers and other educators will become less directive and more facilitative in helping students to increase learning. The focus of the workshops is on technology as a tool to encourage and facilitate student learning through discovery, working in teams, and assimilating information, rather than on technology as an end itself.
The MESPA Technology Center offerings are in workshop format, with abundant "hands on". The Teaching with Technology series has as its focus the use of technology in the classroom as a tool to enhance the learning environment. Areas of emphasis are reading, writing, mathematics, science, social studies, fine arts, health and world languages. The workshops include introductory modules to sponsor technical literacy - addressing the totally uninitiated to the somewhat proficient, in beginner, intermediate and advanced sessions. The workshops are open to all educators. The goal is to facilitate principals, teachers and other educators to become literate in and comfortable with the educational advantages of technology. The format includes "learning by doing" in a friendly, non-threatening environment. The MESPA instructors have established formats for both individual and team learning.
In addition to this state-of-the art Technology Center which can be accessed for the delivery of technology services and training for educators at reduced rates, MESPA, as the largest administrators association in the state, has many other resources which can be accessed for the technology infrastructure:
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