They say summer bodies are made in the winter. The same could be said for summer professional development plans. The summer is a great time to take a week or two to hone your craft and learn something new, and it can be nice to delve into a topic head first. There are a number […]
With snow in the forecast for this week, you might not be thinking about summer. However, if you want to take part in some top rate professional development in the summer months, now is the time to be looking. The National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminars and Institutes are amazing professional development opportunities […]
Once upon a time, you needed a phone line in your house. Then television got more complicated, and you needed cable. And then along came this thing called the Internet, and you had to pay for that, too. Have you thought lately about how much you’re paying the cable company for all these services? I […]
If you’re looking for a summer professional development experience, a Gilder Lehrman Teacher Seminar can be a great option. Over the course of a week, you’ll get to take an in depth look at a specific topic. The seminars are all located in places relevant to their topics, and you can expect to explore the […]
Would you like to travel to Washington, D.C. for a fully funded professional development conference and learn about civics education? Then you should apply today to attend one of C-SPAN’s 2019 Summer Educator Conferences. What Are C-SPAN’s Summer Educator Conferences? Each year, C-SPAN hosts two Summer Educator Conferences at their office in Washington, D.C. Each […]
Would you like to spend a month in Washington, D.C., learning about civics education, working with teachers from across the country, and exploring the city? And would you like to be paid to do it…? Then you ought to apply to be a 2019 C-SPAN Teacher Fellow. What is the C-SPAN Teacher Fellowship? C-SPAN’s Teacher […]
Towards the end of the week, I like to take a moment to reflect on what’s happening around the country (and sometimes the world) with regards to civics education. So here’s a look at some news articles from this week. This week we’ve got an expansion of an elementary civics program, a new effort by […]
So you’re thinking of assigning Project Citizen to your students – or maybe your teacher has assigned it to you – but you want some topic ideas to start with? Well here’s a list of five Project Citizen topic ideas to kick off your brainstorming session. Don’t know what Project Citizen is? That’s ok. Check […]
I’m a big fan of using essential questions and themes to organize my social studies class. If you’ve looked around this site, you probably know that already. If not, check out a few of these posts and then come back: Use Themes to Make Social Studies More Civics Oriented Civic Spotlight: Redesigning a Thematic World […]
It’s not news that civic knowledge and civic engagement throughout the country is pretty low. Recent polls show that a lot of people can’t even name the three branches of government. One reason for this is that our social studies classes are often not living up to their purpose. In a lot of cases, they […]