Courses for Teaching Professionals

Click any title below to view a complete course description including a syllabus, instructor biography, prerequisites, and requirements.

Solving Classroom Discipline Problems
Instructor: James Thompson

Why do some teachers enjoy peaceful, orderly classrooms while other teachers face daily discipline battles? The answer is that many teachers have not been taught the secrets to solving discipline problems. This course reveals those secrets and presents a step-by-step approach to effective, positive classroom discipline. Teachers continually rate this course one of the most valuable they have ever taken.

Survival Kit for New Teachers
Instructor: Tracey Birch

Are you a new teacher who feels anxious about entering your first classroom? Whether you're already teaching, a newly credentialed graduate, or a substitute looking to transition to full-time, this course will provide you with all the time-tested tools, tips, and tricks you need to make your early years in the classroom a breeze.

Ready, Set, Read!
Instructor: Kt Paxton

Learn what the newest research says about how children really learn to read and write and become a powerful guide to literacy development when you work with young children. Gain confidence in your ability to guide a child's literacy development, and take pleasure in seeing how even the littlest events can be really big steps in reading and writing success.

Teaching Science: Grades 4-6
Instructor: Holly Trimble

Ready to maximize your abilities in teaching science? You'll learn about foundational content in physical, life, and earth science, and ways to teach that content to your students. Discover specific teaching methods and science process skills, and learn how to improve the emotional climate in your classroom. Lots of examples and worksheets you can use in your own classroom are included. There's a big emphasis on the scientific method, and there's even an entire lesson devoted to science fairs!

Teaching Math: Grades 4-6
Instructor: Michele Thrailkill

Reinvent math instruction for grades 4-6 by bringing hands-on learning, inexpensive manipulatives, and real-world connections into your classroom. Whether you're a new teacher or a seasoned pro, this course will help you get your students excited about math!

The Creative Classroom
Instructor: Robin Sellers

Creativity will abound in your classroom as you tap into your students' hidden talents. Learn creative new approaches to learning labs, activities, exercises, assignments, field trips, and evaluation methods. Think beyond the textbook and challenge your students by making your classroom a creative classroom!

Differentiated Instruction in the Classroom
Instructor: Tracey Birch

Differentiated instruction (DI) is becoming a mainstay in classrooms across the country as educators are starting to see the ways that the traditional classroom setting limits their ability to reach diverse learners. Join us on this journey through 10 practical DI integration strategies! Count on at least three sample integration lessons on each strategy, and just think of all the ways that you can apply them to improve learning outcomes for your students.

Integrating Technology in the Classroom
Instructor: Robin Sellers

In this professional development course for teachers, you'll learn the secrets of technology integration in the classroom, gaining the skills educators need to use tools such as wikis, podcasts, and blogs effectively. You'll discover simple ways to integrate technology to enhance your subject material and meet your course goals. We'll explore quick-and-easy, standards-based solutions for more interactive lesson plans, exciting WebQuests, and challenging assignments. We'll also unleash the power of Web resources, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Together, we'll look at basic integration, subject-specific activities, and smart ways to make your integration seamless.

The Classroom Computer
Instructor: Stacy Colwell

In this course for teachers, you’ll discover how the classroom computer and technology can ignite your students’ desire for learning! We’ll cover a wide variety of simple, field-tested techniques guaranteed to unleash the power of the computer throughout your curriculum. In just six weeks, you’ll get a thorough education in using the computer with your students on a daily basis in reading, writing, math, science, and social studies.

Using the Internet in the Classroom
Instructor: Robin Sellers

Harness the power of the Internet to make your textbooks and lessons come alive! Teach your students how to locate and evaluate Internet resources. Improve the caliber and amount of discussion through the use of e-mail and discussion boards. The Internet can make teaching easier--this course will show you how.

Microsoft Excel 2003 in the Classroom
Instructor: Robin Sellers

Learn the basics of Microsoft Excel 2003 while exploring ways both you and your students can benefit from this powerful program. You'll learn Excel terminology, how to use the toolbars; how to sort data; how to insert formulas for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, how to create colorful charts and graphs; and much more! Throughout the course, you'll explore standards-based lesson plans and activities that will allow you to pass your Excel knowledge on to your students, no matter what their grade level. By the end of this course, you'll have a solid understanding of the basic functions of Excel, and a wealth of ideas for integrating Excel technology into lesson plans across your curriculum.

Microsoft Word 2003 in the Classroom
Instructor: Robin Sellers

Mastering Microsoft Word can make you a more productive and creative teacher. Throughout this course, you'll learn to create, open, edit, and save documents, as well as create tabs and margins, change alignment and line spacing, add clip art and tables, and complete a host of other exciting tasks. As you get more familiar with this program, you'll likely find that it enhances your teaching in ways you didn't think possible. Join us on this exciting journey into Microsoft Word.

Microsoft PowerPoint 2003 in the Classroom
Instructor: Tracy Loffer

If you're an educator, this course will help you discover the exciting possibilities of using PowerPoint for--and with--your students. You'll master a variety of uses for PowerPoint in the classroom, and you'll be able to create compelling lessons and presentations filled with text, graphics, sound, and video. You'll be able to use PowerPoint templates or create your own dynamic presentations that will increase interest in any subject you teach.

Creating K-12 Learning Materials
Instructor: Michael McMillan

Increase student performance on standards important to your district by learning how to develop your own work books, lab manuals, booklets, activity kits, visual aids, and manipulatives targeting those standards. The instructor--a former K-12 teacher who is also the author and developer of over 50 products for the educational market--will walk you step-by-step through the process of creating a wide variety of instructional materials. You'll also learn how to profit from your ideas by offering the products you develop for sale through catalogs, stores, and trade shows.

Speed Spanish
Instructor: Dan Mikels

This powerful course teaches six easy recipes you can use to glue Spanish words together into sentences. With the powerful methods taught in this course, you'll be able to engage in conversational Spanish in no time. ¡Qué Bueno!

Creating Web Pages
Instructor: Craig Power

Learn how to design, create, and post your very own site on the Internet's World Wide Web. Discover low-cost marketing techniques and search engine strategies.

Get Assertive!
Instructor: Vivian Harte

Are you tired of being intimidated and treated badly by others? Get the assertiveness training you need in order to be more confident and powerful with family members, friends, bosses, co-workers, professionals, service people, and even total strangers. Discover how you lose your power when you talk and what you can do to get it back. Learn how to deal with anger and criticism effectively. It's your turn to speak out!

Leadership
Instructor: Lynne Morton

Leadership skills can help you gain the respect and admiration of others, while also allowing you to enjoy success in your career and more control over your destiny. Contrary to popular belief, leadership skills can be learned and developed. Even if you don't hold a leadership position, this course will teach you how to use the principles of great leaders to achieve success in almost every aspect of your daily life.

A to Z Grantwriting
Instructor: Linda Vallejo

A to Z Grant Writing is an invigorating and informative course that will equip you with the skills and tools you need to enter the exciting field of grant writing! You'll learn how to raise needed funds by discovering how and where to look for potential funders who are a good match for your organization. You'll also learn how to network and develop true partnerships with a variety of funders, how to organize a successful grant writing campaign, and how to put together a complete proposal package.

Enhancing Language Development in Childhood
Instructor: Kt Paxton

Follow your child's lead and have fun while enhancing language development! In this fun and user-friendly course for parents, teachers, and caregivers, you will discover how children learn to process language and how they become proficient speakers and thinkers. This course will help you enrich your child's life by stimulating his or her continued speech, brain, and language development in an enjoyable, age-appropriate, and natural way.

Understanding Adolescents
Instructor: Sonya Jodoin

To know your kids is to love them. In this course, an experienced social worker will help you gain a deep understanding and appreciation of your adolescent's development and behavior. You'll uncover the secrets of the adolescent mind and gain valuable information on how they think, how they feel, how their identities develop, and what steps you can take to ensure that you are well prepared to meet the needs of the teens in your life.

An Introduction to Teaching ESL/EFL
Instructor:

English language teachers enjoy a wide range of opportunities and face a daunting set of challenges. You teach more than a subject—you're teaching skills that will open up the entire world to your students! This course will show you innovative ways of teaching vocabulary and grammar, listening and speaking, and reading and writing. But more than that, it will give you a deeper understanding of who your students are and who you are as a teacher. So join us on this journey of becoming a more reflective and effective English language teacher!

Guiding Kids on the Internet
Instructor: Christine Gee and Katherine Emmons

Work the Web with your kids! This essential course for teachers, leaders, and parents will give you the confidence you need for helping children get the best from the Internet.

Guided Reading: Strategies for the Differentiated Classroom
Instructor: Marsha Spears

Now more than ever, today's teachers are grappling with the question of how to reach struggling readers. While there are no quick fixes, thousands of teachers are combining the principles of differentiated instruction and guided reading with unparalleled success. Mixed in the right proportion, these popular strategies will help you build a balanced literary framework that gets results with even the most challenged learners.

Microsoft Word 2007 in the Classroom
Instructor: Robin Sellers

Mastering Microsoft Word can make you a more productive and creative teacher. You'll learn how to create, open, edit, and save documents, as well as how to create tabs, margins, and spacing. Then you'll make your classroom documents come to life. You'll add borders, clip art, and WordArt. You'll even insert shapes, pictures, tables, and complete a host of other exciting tasks that you can teach your students. As you get more familiar with this program, you'll find that it enhances your teaching in ways you didn't think possible, and you'll have a host of ideas for curriculum-related classroom projects.

Working Successfully With Learning Disabled Students
Instructor: Sara Hardin

Learn how to successfully meet the diverse needs of the learning disabled students in your classroom from an experienced special educator. We'll dissect the whole special education process, from working with individualized education programs (IEPs) to helping students struggling with reading comprehension, math skills, and writing. Empower yourself by discovering easy, practical, and creative strategies that you can use to help your struggling students to find their light bulb moments!

Guided Reading and Writing: Strategies for Maximum Student Achievement
Instructor: Marsha Spears

Get the professional development training you need to improve student literacy as an accomplished teacher shares the secrets of turning guided reading strategies into opportunities for teaching writing. Find out how to harness the power of the total literacy framework. The road to literacy is also the road to ingenuity, invention, and imagination, and you'll soon learn how to take your students from groans to grins with creative lesson plans that really work!

Microsoft Excel 2007 in the Classroom
Instructor: Robin Sellers

Learn the basics of Microsoft Excel 2007 in this professional development course for teachers, and get the training every teacher needs for using and teaching this powerful program effectively in the classroom. You'll master Excel terminology; how to use tabs; how to sort data; how to insert formulas for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division; how to create colorful charts and graphs; and much more! Throughout the course, we'll explore standards-based lesson plans and activities that will allow you to pass your Excel knowledge on to your students, no matter what their grade level. By the end of this course, you'll have a solid understanding of the basic functions of Excel, and a wealth of ideas for integrating this powerful technology into your lesson plans across your curriculum.

Solving Classroom Discipline Problems II
Instructor: James Thompson

In this professional development course, you'll get the teacher training you need to deal effectively with serious discipline problems and help even the most challenging students you're teaching make more responsible choices. You'll learn how to use a new research-based six-step approach to solve severe and chronic discipline problems such as bullying, fighting, using abusive language, stealing, and refusing to work. We'll look at numerous real-life examples set in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms so you can see how to put the ideas into action in your own teaching situation.

Creating the Inclusive Classroom: Strategies for Success
Instructor: Ellen Arnold

In this professional development course for teachers, you'll get the training you need to reach the diverse mix of students you face every day—learning proven strategies that turn diversity into opportunity. With students who have learning disabilities, neurobiological disorders, and physical challenges, the modern classroom requires an efficient and effective teacher who can prioritize under tight deadlines and be creative on demand. Learn how to be the kind of super teacher who can guide every student toward academic success.

Singapore Math Strategies: Model Drawing for Grades 1-6
Instructor: Anni Stipek

In this professional development course for teachers, you'll get the training you need to start teaching model drawing, the powerful Singapore Math strategy that gives word problems a visual context. As a teacher, you know that many students groan when it's time to solve word problems. Why is that? Are the problems too difficult? Do students get lost trying to decipher the wording or figure out the computation? Do they simply not know which strategy to use? Actually, it's a combination of all these issues. Luckily, model drawing, a Singapore Math strategy for working word problems, will help your students start to enjoy math in a way they may never have before.

Teaching Writing: Grades 4-6
Instructor: Melanie Park

In this teacher-training course, you'll learn from an experienced educator how to motivate and assist developing writers. You'll master strategies for teaching the writing process and find out how to develop engaging lessons for different writing applications. We'll explore the benefits of writing across the curriculum, examine ways to organize your writing instruction, and uncover the secrets of effective assessment.

Teaching Students With Autism: Strategies for Success
Instructor: Ellen Arnold

Just 20 years ago, we didn't see students with autism in our classrooms. But today, we teach children with high-functioning autism and Asperger's Syndrome right alongside their neurotypical peers. Reaching and teaching these students requires a delicate balancing act: understanding how their brains are wired, helping them turn challenges into opportunities, and learning to enjoy the rich perspective they bring to the classroom.

Response to Intervention: Reading Strategies That Work
Instructor: Wendell Christensen

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could be proactive in helping our struggling readers? Well, we can! In this six-week course, you'll learn response to intervention (RTI) strategies that ensure the struggling readers in your classroom get the help and education they need. RTI gives us a strategic plan to bring tiered interventions to our students, at their reading level and with their unique challenges in mind. Helping them with phonics, fluency, vocabulary mastery, comprehension, and writing, these intervention strategies tackle the toughest literacy problems with flexibility and creativity.

Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 in the Classroom
Instructor: Tracy Loffer

In this course for teachers, you'll learn how to motivate students and enrich lessons by bringing Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 into your classroom. You'll master a variety of uses for this MS Office program and come away able to develop lessons and presentations filled with text, graphics, sound, and video. You'll be able to use PowerPoint templates or create your own dynamic presentations that will increase interest in any subject you teach!

Creating a Classroom Web Site
Instructor: Robin Sellers

Learn how to create a classroom Web site in this fun, easy-to-understand course for teachers. In no time, you'll build a site with text, images, animations, tables, links, and more. Then you'll create a WebQuest and a blog to add to your site. You'll do all this and more as you discover how simple creating a classroom Web site can be and how having one can make you a more effective and dynamic teacher.

Easy Classroom Podcasting
Instructor: Lori Elliott

Have you ever felt like you just can't reach your students? They speak the language of technology while you speak the language of, well, teachers. But what if there was a bridge between the two? In this professional training course for teachers, you'll learn how to make a podcast that creates a memorable learning experience for your students. You'll find their interest reignited when you start using their favorite formats: audio, images, and video. You won't even need an iPod or a big budget to harness the power of podcasting in your classroom.

Practical Ideas for the Adult ESL/EFL Classroom
Instructor: Rob Jenkins

Learn ESL teaching strategies that will set your adult ESL/EFL students up for success! Over the next six weeks, you'll discover ways to teach ESL that create a meaningful and positive learning environment for your students. You'll get to know what motivates them and how you can tailor your ESL teaching methods to their needs. You'll also explore a wealth of activities you can use to help your students become more confident listeners, speakers, readers, and writers of English. By the end of this course, you'll be teaching ESL in a way that helps your students move skillfully from the classroom to the real world!

Teaching ESL/EFL Reading
Instructor: Neil Anderson

Did you realize that reading is one of the most important skills you can teach? It's truly at the core of the other language skills—listening, speaking, writing, and grammar. In this course, you'll learn how to show your students the value of reading and really motivate them to become strong readers. You'll also get to explore the ins and outs of intensive reading, extensive reading, reading comprehension, reading rate, and much more. The skill of reading not only gives your students what they need to be successful learners, but it also makes them more self-confident and eager to learn their whole life long.

Spanish in the Classroom
Instructor: Tara Williams

Learn the essential Spanish for teachers so you can bridge the communication gap with your Spanish-speaking students and parents! Rest assured that that this course won't be your typical high school Spanish course. We've tossed out long vocabulary lists and complex grammar rules and replaced them with games and stories to make learning easy, painless, and even fun. In addition to basic greetings and general Spanish vocabulary, you'll master words and phrases that directly relate to the classroom, such as classroom objects, front-office receptions, action verbs and commands, study skills, registration, course names, school rules and discipline, and parent-teacher conference vocabulary. By the end of this course, you'll be well on your way to being a Spanish speaker and communicating effectively with the Spanish-speakers all around you. ¡Vamos! (Let's go!)

Singapore Math: Number Sense and Computational Strategies
Instructor: Anni Stipek

Do your students cringe when it's time to pull out their math books? For many students, basic math is a struggle. But for students and teachers in Singapore, math is much more intuitive. And Singaporean students have been top mathematics performers for over a decade! Using a layered curriculum founded on solid number sense and concrete, pictorial, and abstract computational strategies, Singaporean teachers make math purposeful, interesting, and relevant. In this teacher training course, you'll learn their secrets and come away knowing how to have meaningful math lessons in your classroom.

Praxis I Preparation
Instructor: Nicole Taylor-Buckner

Are you a prospective teacher who needs to pass the Praxis I Exam? If so, this is the course for you! You'll develop all the skills you need as we review and prepare for everything the test includes. You'll improve your reading, writing, and math skills so that you'll be ready to pass all three parts of the Praxis I. You'll learn useful test-taking strategies and get plenty of practice test questions. You'll even have the opportunity to take full-length practice tests.

Teaching ESL/EFL Grammar
Instructor: Diane Larsen-Freeman

Do you feel confident enough with your knowledge of English grammar to teach grammar to ESL/EFL students? In this course, you'll learn about the importance of teaching grammar to EFL and ESL students and develop a greater appreciation for the rules of grammar. Get ready to discover new teaching methods that will both engage and challenge your students!

Web 2.0: Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts
Instructor: Robin Sellers

In this course, you'll learn how to create your own blog, wiki, and audio and video podcast. Through hands-on activities in each lesson, you'll practice working with free Web 2.0 tools like Blogger, Wikispaces, and YouTube, and you'll explore opportunities to use tools like these for personal, business, educational, and political projects. You'll also learn tricks for promoting your Web 2.0 content and for driving visitors to your brand-new sites.

Teaching ESL/EFL Vocabulary
Instructor: Paul Nation

Do you know what the different types of vocabulary are and which ones your students most need to learn when you're teaching ESL? In this course, you'll discover how to determine what kinds of vocabulary to have your students focus on and how to help them learn it in the most effective ways. Teaching vocabulary across the four strands of meaning-focused input (listening and reading), meaning-focused output (speaking and writing), deliberate learning strategies, and fluency development is essential. You'll also explore how you can work with vocabulary in content-based instruction and see how to monitor your students' learning. By the end of this course, you'll understand what makes a well-balanced vocabulary course and how to plan one.

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