"Creating Effective Citizens...One Student At A Time."

Growing as a Professional: 
Opportunities for Oklahoma Educators!

Each year, a wide variety of state and national organizations offer stipends and financial support to participants of staff development workshops and institutes. Below is a list of some of the more popular and effective professional development offerings. Contact the individual organizations and their respective websites for more information:

  This workshop provides a varied program of lectures, demonstrations, analysis of documents, independent research, and group work that introduces teachers to the holdings and organization of the National Archives. Participants will learn how to do research in historical records, create classroom material from records, and present documents in ways that sharpen students' skills and enthusiasm for history, social studies, and the humanities. Each participant selects and prepares to research a specific topic, searches the topic in the records of the National Archives, and develops a teaching unit that can be presented in his or her own classroom. Teachers of history, geography, government, civics, sociology, psychology, economics, American studies, literature, and the humanities from upper elementary through college levels take Primarily Teaching. Librarians, media specialists, archivists, and museum educators also find it useful to their work. Primarily Teaching demonstrates secondary strategies, but educators at all levels can easily adapt them to their particular needs.

http://www.archives.gov/education/primarily-teaching/

 The American Institute for History Education is pleased to offer high-quality professional development for teachers of Advanced Placement courses. We will specialize in the social studies subjects. Our workshops are intended to help novice and experienced AP teachers. In addition, we encourage teachers of Honors classes to take advantage of this unique opportunity. The AP summer workshops will be held on the campus of Rowan University in Glassboro , N.J.

http://www.americaninstituteforhistory.org/teacher-professionaldevelopment/AP-summer-institute.php

  NEH is now accepting applications for its 2009 Summer Programs in the Humanities for Teachers. The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent grant-making agency of the federal government. As part of the NEH’s We the People program, we offer the following Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops for Schoolteachers. Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops provide the opportunity for K-12 educators to engage in intensive study and discussion of important topics in American history. These one-week academies will give participants direct experiences in the interpretation of significant historical sites and the use of archival and other primary historical evidence. Landmarks Workshops present the best scholarship on a specific landmark or related cluster of landmarks, enabling participants to gain a sense of the importance of historical places, to make connections between what they learn in the Workshop and what they teach, and to develop enhanced teaching materials for their classrooms.

http://www.neh.gov/projects/landmarks-school.html

          http://www.neh.gov/projects/si-school.html

  Offered year around in various location, highlighting historic and timely topics of study through innovative simulations and research. The Choices Program offers a variety of professional development programs for secondary school teachers, including introductory workshops, half and full-day in-service programs, teaching seminars, and summer teaching institutes. Choices also collaborates with other organizations in the field to offer extended professional development opportunities to area teachers. All programs are interactive, engaging participants in first-hand experience with the international content and student-centered approach of the Choices Program, and all provide opportunity for reflection on applications for the classroom.

http://www.choices.edu/pd/index.php

  Whether you teach American or World History, Geography, Civics, Economics, Sociology, Anthropology, or Psychology, you will increase engagement in your classes when you start using the powerful Kagan Structures. Foster participation, excitement, and accountability. Learn different ways to organize your classroom, and a dozen management tips! Align your teaching with NCSS standards. Today’s students crave a high level of stimulation, and Kagan Structures are the solution. With the structures in place you tap students’ intrinsic motivation to explore their world. Have students experience the power of participatory democracy with cooperative decision making. Make history come alive by unleashing the power of student-to-student interaction. When you use Kagan’s active learning strategies, your students learn more, enjoy class more, and teaching becomes a pleasure.

http://www.kaganonline.com/SummerAcademy/courses/2nd_ss.html

All FTE residential programs are offered at no cost! If you get there, we'll put you up, feed you, provide outstanding instructors and classroom materials. You'll experience interactive economic education as it was meant to be: engaging, empowering, and enjoyable.

http://www.fte.org/teachers/programs/index.php

  A primary goal of the ALPLM Education Department is to help teachers teach. To that end, teacher workshops are an important component of Education Department programming. Workshops are designed for educators in most subjects and in all grade levels unless otherwise indicated. Under our "Teaching Teachers" initiative, the ALPLM is committed to providing educators with strong content-based programs on topics such as Lincoln, the Civil War, African-American History and Illinois History to name a few. These intense "history lessons" will assist educators in developing a solid background on unfamiliar topics or in mastering a discipline they already know and love. In addition, the Education Department's hands-on classroom application programs will provide ideas and methods for teaching historical content across the curriculum using digital resources, primary documents and material culture.

http://www.alplm.org/education/teacher_workshops.html

The National Council for Social Studies annually presents Summer Workshops, designed to strengthen classroom techniques. These workshops take place around the nation during the summer months, and feature in-depth, hands-on information.

http://www.socialstudies.org/workshops

The PACE institute guides educators through a focused examination of a topic in law-related education. During the program, presenters provide both content and strategies to apply the subject in the classroom. The institute's goal is to educate participants in a topic in citizenship education, to expose them to creative methods in presenting the subject matter to their students, and to encourage them to develop and share their own strategies in teaching law-related education. PACE is offered free of charge to educators. The institute is funded annually by a grant from the Oklahoma Bar Foundation and is administered by OBA/LRE.

http://www.okbar.org/public/lre/pace.htm

  OKAGE conducts in-service and pre-service workshops and collaborates with a number of interdisciplinary organizations to provide outreach programs in geographic education. OKAGE also offers summer institutes and workshops to teachers of all disciplines and grades for professional development and graduate credit.

http://www.ngsednet.org/community/about.cfm?community_id=254

  The Institute sponsors a growing roster of seminars each summer for public, parochial, and independent school teachers, Park Service educators, and college professors. In addition, the Institute sponsors a History Scholars summer program for undergraduates. These seminars provide participants with the chance to study an important topic in American history with an eminent scholar in the field, at major institutions including Harvard, Columbia , Stanford, Oxford , Cambridge , and Monticello .

http://www.gilderlehrman.org/teachers/seminars.html

The Center offers workshops, content seminars, institutes, and conferences for upper elementary, middle, and high school teachers, university and college professors, members of the legal community, and We the People state and congressional district coordinators throughout the school year and during the summer.

http://www.civiced.org/index.php?page=we_the_people_national_regional_institutes

Available and Ongoing 
Professional Development Offerings from OCSS

Members of the Oklahoma Council for Social Studies have  extensive training, resources, and classroom experiences which they would like to share with fellow social studies teachers of Oklahoma.

This year, the Board of Directors for OCSS are offering a variety of professional development sessions to any Oklahoma school district. If you, your principal, your superintendent, or your professional development committee are seeking qualified teacher training, please feel free to contact our volunteers directly.

We are eager to serve the needs of Oklahoma's Teachers!

The following board members are offering these staff development opportunities during the school year and summer, upon arrangement with each individual OCSS member...

         Contact State Director of Social Studies, Kelly Curtright
         Office of Standards and Curriculum, Suite 315
         Oklahoma State Department of Education
         2500 North Lincoln Boulevard
         Oklahoma City , Oklahoma 73105-4599
         Phone: (405) 522-3523
         Email: Kelly_Curtright@sde.state.ok.us

Contact: Bill Amburn

AmburnWE@bartlesville.k12.ok.us
  okagebill@aol.com

Contact:  Brenda Chapman, Social Studies Curriculum  Specialist, 
Putnam City Schools
Center for Civic Education Certified Trainer for Project Citizen 
BChapman@putnamcityschools.org

Contact Pam Merrill, Social Studies Curriculum Specialist, Edmond Schools, 405-340-2209
psmerrill@cox.net

SUMMER PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES!!

Be sure to check out the list of annual workshops and institutes offered to Social Studies educators by universities and non-profit organizations each year. Click here for recent list of outstanding offerings! 

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Pam Merrill -