The Massachusetts Teachers Association is pleased to announce that the Request for Proposals for the 2026 MTA Summer Conference is now open. The conference will take place July 26–29 on the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus. Each year, the Summer Conference brings together MTA members from public schools, colleges, and universities, and includes teachers, education support professionals, faculty, professional staff, and retirees.

This year’s conference theme is Building on Legacies of Collective Resistance. This theme inspires us to learn from the long history of movements for labor, racial, gender, education and economic justice, as well as other related struggles for dignity and liberation, and especially from those communities who have lived under generational systemic oppression. By grounding today’s political and social moment in historical context, we strengthen our confidence, cultivate hope, and build our capacity to translate hard-won lessons into effective organizing, advocacy, and collective action.

The MTA’s Division of Training & Professional Learning seeks proposals for workshops on all topics related to the conference theme. We are especially interested in receiving proposals in the following categories:

Anti-Oppression Education

• Rethinking our own power and privileged positions, individually and collectively.
• Transforming our schools to be more equitable and just.
• Organizing our locals to be responsive to and representative of diverse populations.

Professional and Career Development

• Strengthening instructional practices and content to meet the needs of our diverse student populations now and in the future.
• Examining the role of educational institutions in supporting our students, educators, families and communities.
• Exploring emerging and upcoming changes in the use of technology in schools, with critical and supportive perspectives welcome.

Union Skills and Leadership

• Organizing members for successful contract and workplace issue campaigns.
• Developing advocacy and bargaining skills that are grounded in democratic approaches and achieve concrete wins and material gains.
• Strengthening leadership capacity by supporting the continued development of current leaders and cultivating the next generation of union leadership.
• Addressing health and safety issues, including workplace and school violence and the need for safe and healthy buildings for our members and students.
• Supporting retirement readiness through education on pension plans, investment options, and life changes associated with retirement.
• Advancing a political organizing program through local candidate elections, town meetings, municipal budget advocacy, and special elections (Prop 2.5, debt exclusions, building project approval, etc.) in each of our communities towards building political power in our locals.

Community Schools

• Learning how the Community School model operates as a whole-school transformation strategy by providing integrated supports to address the needs of the “whole child” and family.
• Exploring how community schools foster transformative family engagement, shared leadership, and collaborative decision-making.
• Understanding how community schools serve as neighborhood hubs that strengthen civic engagement and advance democracy.

Popular Political Education

• Expanding popular political and economic education, as the challenges we face in our schools and colleges are deeply rooted in issues facing our world, such as the wealth gap, austerity measures, issues facing immigrant students and families, the environmental crisis, and the degradation of democracy.
• Grounding today’s political and social moment in a historical context, including past attacks on public education, labor rights, civil rights, and academic freedom. Strengthening our capacity to translate historical lessons into present-day strategies.

 

Workshop Details:
We are seeking proposals for workshops of the following lengths:

• 90 minutes - These opportunities will be more limited.
• 3 hours - To take place in the morning and afternoon.
• 12-plus hours - Spanning over 2-3 days, including Union Skills and Leadership track programs and programs for which we can issue Professional Development Points to PreK-12 teachers seeking license renewal. If your program is PDP-eligible, we will also ask if you are interested in presenting online at other times during the summer.