Dear Massachusetts School Counselors

Welcome to the school year 2008-2009.  And a special welcome to our new website, MASCA.ORG.  Communication is the life of an organization.  And our website is alive and full of information.  It is constantly being updated with information about affiliates, conferences and professional development opportunities, Department of Elementary and Secondary Education information, American School Counselors Association news and events.  There is also a variety of important information about counselor licensure, the Mass Model, our fall and spring conferences.  Ron Miller has created a website that is both helpful and manageable.  Thanks, Ron.

Our fall conference in Boxborough included presentations by Jim Bierma, the President of ASCA, Dr. Karla Baehr, Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, Representative Alice Piesch, from the Joint Commission on Education and Representative Kevin Aguiar, a State Representative who a year ago was a school counselor himself.  Our keynote speakers – Dr. Barent Walsh, a national authority on self injury and Dr. Carey Dimmitt, Ph.D., from the University of Massachusetts Center for School Counseling Outcome Research – will enlighten, entertain and empower counselors across the state. 

Our spring conference will be held in Sturbridge this year, April 30th – May 2, 2009.  He is the author of many books, particularly on boys.  Raising Cain has received many awards and recognized as a powerful contribution to the literature on adolescent male psychology and development.

We are all well aware of the economic and political worlds we live in.  Educational legislation is cranked out almost daily.  The media quotes test scores, graduation rates, drop out figures, college attendance and college completion numbers.   Guess what !!
These numbers are about us.  School counselors can make the difference. 
But we can’t sit on the sidelines waiting to be appreciated and discovered.  We must step up and be counted.  MASCA needs you and your colleague who has not joined yet.  We need you to make a difference in your office, school, town, state, country and world.  On February 4th we will be on the Hill (Beacon Hill) meeting with the legislators and telling them who we are and what we are doing.  We each have a story about making the difference in a student’s life and now we have to tell that story.

The nation has set a lofty goal, No Child Left Behind. The state has developed one of the most challenging Educational Reform plans of any state, which includes MCAS.  Each city and town is attempting to improve their measurements; attendance rates, discipline hearings, graduation and dropout statistics, Advanced and Proficient numbers, educational proficiency plans.  We are the difference.  A comprehensive, developmental guidance program will make it happen.  But we have to tell them, educate them and convince them.

This is such an exciting year to be a counselor in Massachusetts.  We need you to help make the difference.