Some PD Sessions on home page updated - half for late June, half for July 2026
My plan from my post at Memorial Day weekend was to only do one update per month of available (and mostly virtual) professional development sessions. However, I'm finding that I need to "tweak" that a bit - the more I talk to peers running conferences, I am finding that their registrations are filling up early (OR they are ending registration early enough to send out materials in advance). Either way, I don't want to see teachers left out . . . !
Jay LeBlanc
6/12/20264 min read
As I mentioned above, my original plan for the summer was to update the PD sessions only once a month, right at the beginning of the month. However, what I am discovering is that the registration process is further out than that - some conferences in July are already getting close to ending registration or capping their number of attendees. I don't want to take down June PD sessions still to come . . . but 3 of the 6 have already taken place in the first half of the month. SO . . . I'm going to start rotating in conferences/trainings for early July to "get the word out" to interested teachers about these opportunities. Again, I will add additional late July events near the end of this month.
I want to mention a little more detail about each of these, since all three are multi-day opportunities. The first one is the APSI (Advanced Placement Summer Institute) Hybrid Conference hosted by Federal Reserve Education and the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, taking place between July 7th and July 10th. The first day (Tues, July 7th) is specifically for new teachers (new to teaching AP, not to teaching in general), while the other 3 days are open to anyone teaching AP Macro and/or AP Micro. You do need to have an AP/College Board account, but otherwise the sessions are FREE (which considering a week-long AP workshop can run $1K + is quite the savings!). They are also running an in-person component in St. Louis if you happen to be in that area (and will feed you breakfast/lunch in that case). The registration deadline is Friday, June 26th so act soon if interested. Here is a link for more details about the agenda - the registration link as usual is on the main page of the website. https://www.federalreserveeducation.org/resources/pd/2026-apsi-agenda.pdf
Second, I admit to a little "bias" promoting the Council for Economic Education (CEE)'s 3-day virtual Summer Institute because like last year I will be moderating all of the conference sessions. This conference goes from 9am to 3pm CT on Tues and Wed, and 10am to 3pm CT on Thurs, and is completely FREE! Register at https://econedlink.org/webinar/collection/2026-summer-institute/
Day 1 (Tue, July 14th) will focus on Economics (with a "fireside chat" keynote by Dr. Betsey Stevenson on "The Future of Work and Family")
Day 2 (Wed, July 15th) will focus on Financial Literacy (with a "fireside chat" keynote by author and former SEC Chair Sheila Bair on "From Storybooks to Systemic Change"
Day 3 (Thu, July 16th) will go in-depth into project-based learning and a new investment simulation from Vanguard.
Third, for the non-ECON/PFL followers out there, the Smithsonian is offering their National Education Summit on "Towards a More Perfect Union" that same week in a split hybrid format. The last two days (July 15 and 16) are in-person in Washington D.C. on the various Smithsonian campuses, but the first day (Tuesday, July 14th) is all-virtual from 9:30am to 4:00pm CT. They will have sessions on a variety of social studies and humanities topics, but two features are the opening keynote with poet Amanda Gorman on "How Poems Tell the Story of Our Time", and the closing keynote (for Day 1) from children's author Mac Barnett (author of over 70 picture books). Again, the virtual sessions are completely FREE - if you attend in person you only pay a deposit for tours. More information at https://smithsonianeducation.swoogo.com/ses2026/schedule
Finally, a quick update on "updates" - I assume most of you saw the post last week about issues with my internet domain provider (it simply wasn't letting me save or publish any updates, which makes it hard to update!). Hopefully back up to speed since then, and was able to use the time to work on some other projects. The one post that did get pushed back a bit was the initial "Famous American Court Cases" post on the trial of Anne Hutchinson in the 1630s - I decided I wanted to use the time to tweak the format just a little more. I should have that up in the next couple of days. I will be in Kansas and Nebraska late next week for some events (and lunch with my sister) but I'm planning to schedule some posts in advance and work on others while I have a little quiet hotel time. Again, my goal over the summer will be 3 posts per week - so far my average is close to that (since I posted twice last week after the issue was resolved) and this week will definitely exceed!
Below I'm going to continue documenting the PD items I put on the home page - keep in mind in this case that the first three (3) are repeats from last time. I will not duplicate registration links, but at least can record what was offered for "posterity". Here are the new listings (in chronological order) as of today:
NextGen Personal Finance (NGPF), "Behind the Curtain: What Students Should Know About the Investment Industry with Patrick Geddes", 6/16, 6-7pm CT
Intuit for Education, "2026 Virtual Educator Conference", 6/23, 11am-3pm CT
National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), "2026 NCSS Summer Virtual Conference: From Revolution to Resilience", 6/23 from 10am-3:45pm CT AND 6/24 from 10am-3:45pm CT
Federal Reserve Education, "APSI (AP Summer Institute) Hybrid Conference from the St. Louis Fed", 7/7 through 7/10, normally 8:30am-4:30pm CT each day
Council for Economic Education, "Annual Summer Institute", 7/14 through 7/16, normally 9am-3pm CT each day
Smithsonian Institute, "National Education Summit - "Towards a More Perfect Union", 7/14 (virtual day), 9:30am-4pm CT
ECON and More
Curating articles for K-12 education.
CONTACT
© 2025. All rights reserved.