Summer Professional Learning
Summer Professional Learning for Teachers 2025
Enhance teaching skills, cultivate thriving classrooms, and discover innovative strategies with iCivics’ summer professional learning opportunities for educators.
Summer Programs for Educators
Build Your Capacity & Elevate Your Teaching
Maximize your summer and elevate your fall when you 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 in your district.
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?
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.
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.
Summer Professional Learning Menu of Services
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.
• Build inquiry skills: questions, sources, tasks.
• Create relevant questions, curate primary and secondary sources, and build tasks that scaffold literacy.
• Foster critical thinking and collaboration.
• Cultivate classroom inquiry, empowering engaged, informed citizens.
Offered for K-12 Educators
Self-guided Learning Pathway completion time: Approximately 12 hours
Collaborative Learning Pathway completion time: 20 Hours, including three synchronous virtual sessions
Introducing Civics 101 & 102
Discover methods for incorporating civic education into classroom culture and management. You will make connections between civic education and important pedagogical strategies such as inquiry, differentiation, information literacy, and multilingual learning.
Objectives:
• Foster a collaborative classroom culture through civic education.
• Connect learning to community, building service and leadership skills.
• Explore civic lens applications: inquiry, culture, discussion, media literacy, and iCivics resources.
• Designed for classroom and community needs, this course empowers participatory students.
Offered to K-12 Educators with 0-3 Years of experience teaching Social Studies
Self-guided Learning Pathway completion time: Approximately 12 hours
Collaborative Learning Pathway completion time: 20 Hours, including three synchronous virtual sessions
Coming Soon: Supporting Social Studies Best Practices in Classrooms and Schools
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.
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
Coming Soon: Elementary Civics and Social Studies
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.
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 synchronous virtual sessions
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!
