Nonprofit Reaches 25,000 Remote Participants
WAKEFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS — Massachusetts Partnerships for Youth (MPY) Executive Director Margie Daniels announces the nonprofit has provided critical remote professional development and training sessions to more than 25,000 participants addressing the challenges COVID-19 poses for educators.
After halting its planned in-person conferences due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March, MPY moved its programming online for the first time, utilizing technology such as Zoom. Through its online webinars, MPY has provided more than 25,000 participants including psychologists, social workers, guidance counselors, nurses, teachers, administrators and paraprofessionals the guidance and resources they need to reach out and support students and families for the remainder of the school year.
“Very quickly I realized that if we wanted to continue bringing professional development to Massachusetts educators that we needed to do it in a very different way,” Daniels said. “So we began to do webinars. I had no idea it would resonate the way it has. One of the nice things, aside from providing professional development, is that we have really built a caring community of educators.”
“What has been the most helpful to me throughout the entire remote learning process is knowing that from 10 a.m to 12 p.m. of every day, Monday through Friday, I can log into a webinar where I am going to receive incredible love, support, compassion, validation and empathy from all of the presenters,” said Angela Caira, a freshman guidance counselor at Shawsheen Valley Technical High School in Billerica. “No matter who it is, no matter what the topic is, I am going to leave feeling better than when I logged on.”
Webinar topics, focusing primarily on behavioral and mental health, have included equitable online lesson planning, well-being and mindfulness, planning for working with students post-COVID-19, district wide mental health screening, legal guidance, supporting staff, engaging families remotely and social media and screen time.
MPY has also opened up its webinars to educators statewide, at no cost, in an effort to ensure the school community has the tools and resources needed to help students and their families through this unprecedented time.
“I know that they intentionally opened it up and made it free to any educator, which was another extraordinary gift to all,” said Melinda O’Neil, an elementary guidance counselor at Peter Noyes Elementary School in Sudbury. “Because, imagine being an educator and you’re trying to figure out what you’re doing and you’re trying to access the best resources and trying to support your students: where do you go? And now you have this menu that you can dial up from your home, and it’s free and on top of that is extraordinary. To get that quality level education is fantastic.”
The following video clips may be used freely by the news media:
- MPY Webinar SOT: click here.
- MPY Webinar VO: click here.
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About the Massachusetts Partnerships for Youth, Inc.
Massachusetts Partnerships for Youth, Inc. is a non-profit 501.c(3) organization that provides training, fosters collaboration, and develops programming to increase the health and safety of students. Member organizations include more than 140 public school districts, charter schools, private schools, special education schools, educational collaboratives, and youth community service organizations in the Commonwealth. MPY is committed to bringing cutting-edge information and high quality trainings to constituents and endeavors to provide solution-oriented, community-based, multi-disciplinary approaches to reducing and ideally eliminating risky behaviors for youth.
The nonprofit is governed by a Board of Directors made up of school superintendents, police and fire chiefs, and other community leaders who work closely with MPY staff to deliver this mission.
To learn more, visit www.mpyinc.org.
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