February's Online Professional Development Opportunities

While January can be a bit of a slog (the holidays are over, the weather is usually not so great, and teachers and students are trying to get back in the swing of things), I'm always amazed at how quickly the month can pass by. Now we're one month into the new semester, and things are, at least in theory, starting to settle down, which means it's the perfect time for some professional development.

Folger Shakespeare Library is offering an online masterclass on teaching Othello, and based on the other online masterclasses I've participated in from the Folger, it should be incredible. The masterclass is scheduled for Thursday, February 11 at 7:00 pm ET, and the cutoff date for registering is February 9. There is a $20.00 registration fee, and it is well worth it. In addition to the masterclass, you get a pdf of handouts and teaching materials, an archived link to the webinar that you can access later, and a certificate of participation if you need that for your school/district.

AMLE has two free webinars this month, one geared toward a general audience of middle-school teachers and one focused more on science. These are:

• Making Positive Behavior Support Work in the Middle Level, which is scheduled for Wednesday, February 3 at 4:00 pm ET
• Next Generation Science Standards in the Middle Grades, which is scheduled for Wednesday, February 24 at 4:00 pm ET

Teaching Tolerance has a free webinar on Teaching the Civil Rights Movement with "Perspectives," which is TT's anti-bias, literacy-based curriculum. The webinar is on Tuesday, February 9 at 5:30 ET (4:30 CT). 

edWeb.net has a lot of free offerings this month. These webinars include:

• Igniting the Spark: Engaging Secondary Students in Real-World Mathematical Problem-Solving, which is on February 9 at 5:00 pm ET.
• New Lessons for Women's History Month featuring Female Medal of Honor Recipient, Mary Walker, which is on February 25 at 1:00 pm ET.