The Best Free Summer PD for Teachers
Looking to spice up your teaching portfolio without breaking the bank this summer?
Look no further.
Keeping your teaching portfolio up-to-date and containing relevant professional development can be tricky. Additional Qualification courses can be expensive and time consuming; in-person conferences are often hard to find time for; many courses out there just don’t seem worth the time and effort.
Thankfully, I’m kind of obsessed with finding free, easy-to-access teacher professional development (just check out my “Professional Development” highlight on Instagram). I love online PD because I can access it from home (often from my back deck, or in my gazebo, and often with a refreshing beverage in hand). This is great for me, as I live pretty far from any city that would host a teaching conference, and also because I now have two little ones at home, which makes it harder for me to schedule time for additional learning. But really, it’s amazing for anyone with a busy schedule and a desire to expand their learning as an educator.
Enter online PD.
I’m saving you the hassle of tracking down the best online courses for teachers out there and listing my favourites right here, for you. I have participated in ALL of them, for free. I’ve even presented in a few.
Check them out below, and if you see something that sparks your interest, give it a try!
There’s really nothing to lose!
I stumbled upon the Bilingual Educators Virtual Summit a few summers ago. Only after registering did I realize that this was originally a summit for Spanish-English teachers (whoops!) but, you know what? I learned a lot from the sessions and made connections with some amazing teachers. In 2020, the summit has opened up to other bilingual teachers (including French-English). Woohoo! As a result, yours truly was one of the 50+ presenters. This year, it runs from July 26-30. You can snag yourself a free spot now, or splurge for the VIP pass.
Lots of amazing familiar names have presented in the past, including my friends Velckis Vallarta (Missy Bilingual), Mariah Stassen from KinderJardin and Tia Parnell from Parfaitement Parnell.
Check it out!
2. Educators2Educators Teacher Summer Reboot
In 2019, I signed up for the e2e Teacher Summer Reboot conference and LOVED it. So much so, that I myself have presented twice at E2E conferences and was a guest speaker on the E2E podcast. These were amazing experiences that allowed me to see just how passionate Carrie Conover, the organizer of e2e, is about teacher professional development. The sessions are incredible and applicable for a wide variety of grades.
I HIGHLY recommend that you check out this summer’s conference, which runs from July 16-18, 2021, and focuses on Back to Basics.
You can sign up FOR FREE, or purchase a membership, which gives you access to 300+ videos and tutorials, allows you to connect to the online community, and allows you to earn completion certificates.
3. Hive Summit
I have also taken part in the Hive Summit, which is another online conference for teachers of all grades. The style of the conference videos is a bit different with this summit, where Michael Matera interviews teachers about a particular topic.
This summer’s summit runs from August 1-14th. Check it out!
4. Scholar’s Choice Webinars
Scholar’s Choice hosts some awesome webinars for parents, teachers and caregivers. Last summer, I took part in a few of them, including one entitled “Taking Learning & Play Outdoors” (linked below). When you watch the webinar live, you get a completion certificate, and they sometimes have giveaways throughout the webinar. If you miss any of the sessions, you can watch them on their YouTube channel (although you’ll miss out on the perks of singing up for and attending the live sessions).
5. Soar to Success Summit
The Soar To Success Summit is a FREE online conference for kindergarten and pre-kindergarten teachers who want to learn the most innovative methods in early childhood education. This is a 5-day event where 19 experts in Pre-K and Kindergarten education will show you the science-backed and hands-on methods for better social-emotional teaching.
There are a variety of options for attending the event, which I love. You can listen to workshops for free, or splurge for a few different options that include certificates of attendance, extended video access, audio recordings of all sessions, and more.
I personally vouched for the “Mere Mortal” access pass so that I can listen to workshop recordings after the conference is over, and so that I can access certificates to include in my personal teaching portfolio.
The conference runs from July 8-12, 2021. Click here to find out more!
Do you know of any other free teacher professional development sessions? If yes, I would LOVE to hear about them!
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Hey, I’m Laura!
I’m a French Immersion Kindergarten teacher from Ontario, Canada, and I can’t wait for you to see what I have in store to make your teacher life easier!
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