After a busy school year, the summer holidays can be a great time to rest and recharge before the next academic year begins. However, the free time you have as an educator during the summer months offers a unique opportunity to invest some of your time in professional development (PD). Professional development for teachers is exceedingly important as edtech becomes a bigger part of the everyday classroom, so it’s important that teacher training is current to ensure efficiency in the classroom.
The end of the school year is a good time to reflect on your strengths and weaknesses as an educator in order to choose your best area of focus for summer PD. If you don’t know where to start, try a self-assessment tool, such as this English teaching assessment tool from the British Council.
Once you’ve decided what areas of your teaching you want to focus your professional development on this summer, it’s important to find quality training resources and PD courses to invest your time and money on.
To help you in your search, we’ve compiled a list some of the best opportunities for professional development for teachers and education leaders of all kinds:
For Any Educator: FutureLearn
This online platform offers professional development for teachers on a wide variety of teaching topics, including accessibility, digital skills and technology, teaching music and more. FutureLearn offers 3 different types of courses: short courses to learn new skills, in-depth programs to earn professional or academic accreditation and flexible online degrees. The PD platform also offers a variety of options to fit your budget and goals, from free course access to a subscription-based unlimited plan that provides certificates of achievement for courses you’ve completed.
For Literacy Educators: Literacy Matters
Literacy Matters offers accredited online professional development for teachers focused mainly on literacy education as well as special educational needs. These courses are accredited as part of the CACHE Endorsed Learning Programme, and educators who complete courses receive a certificate of achievement from CACHE. Additionally, Literacy Matters offers free seminars on a variety of topics throughout the year.
For School Administrators and Curriculum Leaders: ASCD PD Online
The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development provides award-winning online professional development for teachers. These courses connect course materials to real-world practice through a blend of learning media. PD Online courses comply with SCORM standards and specifications for web-based learning, making it possible to use the courses with your own learning management system (LMS).
For FREE: edX
edX provides educators with access to a wide variety of PD courses backed by some of the best universities and institutions around the world. There are courses offered in a variety of languages for nearly every educator and education topic you can imagine. All course instructors are highly-skilled and are usually professors or educators at the course’s supporting institution.
For Customized Professional Development for Teachers: itslearning
Create a professional development plan for educators at your school directly through the itslearning LMS in order to customize PD to fit your needs. See how DeKalb County Public Schools created a custom online professional development course for teachers to help smoothly integrate the LMS in the district.
