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Summer Professional Learning

Elevate your Teaching this Winter

Enhance teaching skills, cultivate thriving classrooms, and discover innovative strategies with iCivics’ professional learning opportunities for educators.

Build Your Capacity & Elevate Your Teaching

Two students are in a library, one holding a tablet and the other writing with a pen. They appear to be engaged in a discussion.

Invest in your professional development with flexible learning designed to fit your schedule. Choose from our diverse offerings, which include online courses, interactive virtual workshops, and collaborative cohorts that connect you with educators nationwide. 

Our team’s coaching—paired with our best-in-class curriculum—can save you time, build capacity, and positively impact student outcomes.

Register Today!

Our Unique Approach to PL

Elevate your professional development with our paid professional learning offerings, which are grounded in these effective practices and standards to provide a distinct learning experience:

Lead with Inquiry

Courses are structured inquiries grounded in a compelling question, with carefully curated, research-based sources and tasks.

Drive Continuous Improvement

Courses create a cycle for educators to learn new strategies, put them into practice, and then reflect and improve.

Foster Collaboration

Courses intentionally create collaborative environments for teachers to learn from one another and share challenges and successes.

Cultivate Leadership

Courses provide supportive coaching, walkthroughs, and constructive feedback that nurture and grow educators into leaders.

What is included?

Students and teacher engage, raising hands

Self-guided Learning Pathway

Receive 1 year of access to course materials through our online learning management services. 

Learn on your own time with 30-60-minute asynchronous course videos. 

Receive regular digital communications.

Registration is only $150

Collaborative Learning Pathway

Receive 1 year of access to course materials through our online learning management services. 

Learn on your own time with 30-60-minute asynchronous course videos. 

Join a six-month cohort that fosters community and interactive collaboration with three 90-minute workshops.

Registration is only $250.

Menu of Services for Individual Offerings

Fostering an Inquiry-based Classroom

Building a culture of inquiry requires creating and using questions, gathering and adapting primary and secondary sources, and scaffolding skills essential to content, disciplinary, and informational literacies.

Objectives:

  • Engage informed citizens through inquiry and foster critical thinking and collaboration. 
  • Build inquiry skills: questions, sources, tasks.
  • Create relevant questions, curate primary and secondary sources, and build tasks that scaffold literacy.
  • Cultivate classroom inquiry, empowering engaged, informed citizens.

Registration opens soon

Offered to K-12 Educators

Self-guided Learning Pathway completion time: Approximately 12 hours

Collaborative Learning Pathway completion time: 20 Hours, including three synchronous virtual sessions

Graduate credit opportunities are now available for those who participate in the Collaborative Learning Pathway. 

Fostering a healthy democracy starts with building media and information literacy (MIL) skills by equipping educators with the dispositions, skills, and knowledge to teach students how to critically analyze, evaluate, and responsibly act on information.

Objectives:

  • Educators will become more mindful of the importance of the “pursuit of accuracy” and recognize that MIL practices are vital for a healthy classroom and democracy.
  • Educators will be introduced to the five key practices of MIL–Access, Analyze, Evaluate, Create, Act–and apply strategic inquiry methods, such as lateral reading and effective search strategies.
  • Educators will be introduced to the five key practices of MIL–Access, Analyze, Evaluate, Create, Act–and apply strategic inquiry methods, such as lateral reading and effective search strategies.

Registration opens soon

Offered to K-12 Educators

Self-guided Learning Pathway completion time: Approximately 12 hours 

Collaborative Learning Pathway completion time: 20 Hours, including three 60 minute synchronous virtual sessions

Make Private i History Detectives and our K-5 social studies and civics curriculum come alive in your classroom. This course offers practical strategies and support for seamlessly integrating our inquiry-based methodology.

Objectives:

  • Implement dynamic inquiry in elementary classrooms with Private i History Detectives.
  • This K-5 social studies and civics curriculum guides educators, fostering student-driven exploration.
  • It supports inquiry-based learning, cultivating critical thinking and historical understanding through active investigation.

Registration opens soon

Offered to K-5 Teachers and Leaders

Self-guided Learning Pathway completion time: Approximately 12 hours 

Collaborative Learning Pathway completion time: 20 Hours, including three 60-minute synchronous virtual sessions

This pathway provides training to instructional leaders to create and foster momentum for pedagogical shifts around inquiry-based learning, information, and media literacy, and implementing iCivics’ core curriculum.

Objectives:

  • Empower instructional leaders to support social studies educators. This pathway provides training to create momentum for pedagogical shifts.
  • Learn to foster inquiry-based learning, enhance information and media literacy, and effectively implement iCivics’ core curriculum.
  • Equip leaders to drive change and enrich student civic engagement.

Registration opens soon

Offered to school-level instructional coaches & school leaders who support social studies or civics teachers

Self-guided Learning Pathway completion time: Approximately 12 hours

Collaborative Learning Pathway completion time: 20 Hours, including three synchronous virtual sessions

Advocating for Professional Learning Funds: Tips and a Template

Don’t let budget constraints limit your professional development goals. Access our guide for proven strategies and a ready-to-use template to make a compelling case for funding to your administrators or district leaders.

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After this session, I feel more empowered to implement media literacy in my classroom in a more intentional and meaningful way. I thought of opportunities where it will fit into my instructional block, and I feel confident that this is something I will make more of a priority."
Florida Educator
Teacher in classroom with group of students at desks
I’m excited to bring these strategies into my teaching practice and watch my students grow as critical thinkers and communicators."
North Carolina Educator
North Carolina Educator
I can better use questions both in planning and in instruction. I found the question matrix very useful, as well as deep diving on how important questions are to the construction of an inquiry but also in the instruction of it.”
Texas Educator
Texas Educator

Why invest in building educator capacity in your district?

Only 22 percent of 8th graders in the United States scored proficient or above in the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in civics, meaning that they understand civic principles and know how to apply them.

So what can we do? There are several factors that make a difference in students’ civic proficiency, from dosage to pedagogy to family engagement.

The 2022 NAEP data tells us that the single most important factor is teachers’ confidence in their ability to explain the importance of participation in the political process and government, accounting for a 35-point difference in student performance.  

Teacher Confidence in Explaining the Importance of Participation in the Political Process and Government

This is where iCivics can support you.  Explore our 2025 summer professional learning opportunities today. Together, we will build the best pathway forward!