Gain new insights and develop strategies to strengthen civics, social studies, and history education in your classroom, school, district, or organization! The Civic Learning Institute (CLI) offers engaging, interactive professional learning for teachers and leaders in K-12 and higher education in which you will:
Deepen your understanding of important concepts and content in civics, social studies, and US history through professional learning designed by leading experts and practicing teachers.
Enhance your teaching skills by experiencing first-hand the powerful approaches to supporting learning that you can then use either in your classroom to support student learning or in your school or department to support the learning of colleagues.
Engage in discussions with other educators.
Begin to plan how you will apply the ideas and tools you explore to a learning experience for students or a professional learning experience for colleagues.
Receive feedback and support from experienced educators.
For high-quality civic education, learners of all ages need meaningful opportunities to develop what they know and can do as civic participants, in contexts from their everyday communities to the national and global stage. CLI professional learning supports educators in cultivating students’ civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions, whether through civics projects or everyday classroom routines. The goal is to help all students see themselves as contributors to civic life—curious, capable, and ready to engage in their communities.
Each CLI learning experience is aligned with the Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy. Developed by a cross-ideological group of 300 educators, scholars, and practitioners, the Roadmap provides guidance for creating powerful civic and history learning experiences to support students in becoming skilled, motivated, and responsible participants in US constitutional democracy.
Participants who engage with a professional learning session run by the Civic Learning Institute will receive a certificate of completion from the Harvard Graduate School of Education documenting their professional learning hours.
Learn more below about our currently available learning opportunities, and please check back often for updates on new opportunities that we will be offering in the 2025-26 school year.
Sign up to learn more about any of the learning opportunities below and access registration.
Upcoming Online Courses
Difficult Conversations in the Classroom
Date Fall 2025
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Creating a classroom environment that allows for open, honest, respectful conversations about difficult and potentially sensitive topics can be challenging. And yet providing time and space to teach and model for students how to engage respectfully with one another’s ideas and opinions is more important than ever. Dialogue, including disagreement, is an essential part of a healthy democracy. In this course, we’ll examine a case study that illustrates how teaching a topic like Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the Americas or the connections between the civil rights movement and Black Lives Matter can lead to difficult conversations with students, families, community members, school board members, and other stakeholders. We’ll share and model a variety of pedagogical strategies for facilitating civil discourse and supporting students in developing their capacity for reflective patriotism, a sense of voice and agency, and civic friendship.
Our Declaration: “We the People” and Our Declaration
Date Fall 2025
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“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and the right of the People to “alter or abolish” their government — the famous words of the Declaration of Independence — lay the foundations of our constitutional democracy. In this course, Danielle Allen draws on her teaching and writing about the Declaration to explore how the document took shape and what guiding principles we can find in it for our own lives today. Following the Educating for American Democracy Roadmap, participants will work together to interpret the Declaration’s arguments for freedom and equality and its religious appeals. Participants will also consider later efforts to bring the United States closer to the ideals of the Declaration and to realize its vision of equality and liberty.
Making History & Civic Learning Meaningful: The Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy
Date Fall 2025
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What do you get when you ask 300 educators and academic experts, all across the political spectrum, what “excellence in teaching history and civics” really looks like? You get the Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy, a set of key themes, questions, challenges, and pedagogical principles that guide us on our way to best practices. The Roadmap helps us to think about how to make civic learning and rigorous civic dialogue accessible for all students in the United States, how to cultivate students’ civic identity and sense of responsibility, and how to support students as they learn to act in a responsible and informed manner as citizens. In this course, participants will engage deeply with the Roadmap and will practice following its guidance as they (re)design lesson plans and teaching materials.
Student-led Civics Projects: Using Project-Based Learning to Develop Civic Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions
Date Fall 2025
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Student-led civics projects provide a unique and meaningful opportunity for students to examine themselves and their communities, and to cultivate an understanding of their personal interests, motivations, and decisions as civic participants. In this course, we’ll draw from actual student project examples to support you in planning and carrying out projects with students if you haven't tried one before, or in going deeper with student-led civics projects if you've already facilitated them. You may also choose to apply the project-based learning processes and principles to other areas of your work with students.
HarvardX: We the People: Civic Engagement in a Constitutional Democracy
Ongoing Enrollment | Learn more and register here
Gain a foundational knowledge of American constitutional democracy and understand how to encourage others to explore their own civic paths, while in parallel crafting your own civic voice and identity.
By-Request Workshops
Professional Development Workshops in Your School or District
Schedule a workshop with us! The Civic Learning Institute provides high-quality professional development on your schedule and targeted to the needs of your department, school, or district. Use our materials (including facilitator agenda, slide deck, and participant anchor document) to deliver a session yourself, or engage our staff of experienced facilitators to lead an in-person or virtual workshop during your scheduled professional development time. Our workshops emphasize civic education that honors pluralism in the classroom and equips students to navigate and shape the world around them. Drawing on research-based pedagogies and reflective practice, workshop participants strengthen their ability to foster students’ civic development through inquiry, dialogue, and hands-on projects. The workshops position civic learning not as an isolated subject, but as an integral element of all subjects which prepares young people to contribute to a healthy democracy.
For each workshop title, you will be prompted to choose your preferred delivery modality from the following menu:
Option A: You will receive a 1-2 hour consultation from the CLI team, after which you will be provided with the corresponding workshop materials (i.e., facilitator agenda, slide deck, participant anchor document, and associated resources) in order for you to self-facilitate the offering on your own, with your colleagues, or in your school/district.
Option B: Our team will lead the delivery of the offering live on Zoom to you and your colleagues, school, or district.
Option C: Our team will lead the delivery of the offering live in-person by traveling to your location.
Access a list of available workshop titles and descriptions here.
If you have questions about these learning experiences, please contact civiclearning@gse.harvard.edu.
FAQ
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The costs of CLI professional learning opportunities range in price dependent upon the type and number of experiences for which you register. All pricing is noted for each offering on corresponding registration forms.
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Registration for each type of learning opportunity is available through the link provided on the website page for that offering. The registration site is different from this website and will open in a separate window/tab.
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Each workshop is designed to involve participants for 2 hours.
Each asynchronous online module (available no later than September 30, 2025) is designed to take 4 hours.
Each online course is designed to be about 10 hours total. This includes two, two-hour synchronous classes (at the start and end of each course), and about six hours of self-guided work and feedback in between, over the four-week period.
Each half- or full-day in-person session is delivered on-site for either 4 or 7 hours of delivery time, respectively. The half-day session includes one 1-hour Zoom or phone session consultation prior to the day. The full-day session includes a 2-hour Zoom or phone session consultation prior to the day. Travel is paid by the school or district separately and is managed directly with the CLI team providing the in-person facilitation.
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The professional learning experiences are focused on high-quality civic education. Workshops and modules focus on powerful civics teaching skills for educators in the classroom. Online courses are extended learning experiences focused on foundational texts like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address; crucial periods of American history including the Vietnam War and the Jim Crow era; and pedagogical topics such as student-led civics projects, addressing difficult topics in social studies classrooms, digital competency, and the EAD Roadmap.
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Each professional learning opportunity (workshops, asynchronous online modules, courses, or half- or full-day delivery) is led by experienced facilitators who also have experience teaching and leading professional development for educators and schools.
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All participants who complete a workshop or course run by CLI will receive a certificate of completion from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, which documents participation hours. We are an accredited professional development provider in Massachusetts. Educators from across the country who have participated in our programs have been able to get their hours approved for credit in their home state.
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Yes! You will have the opportunity to put what you are learning into practice by designing (or revising) learning experiences for your students (if you are a classroom teacher) or your colleagues (if you are school leader/instructional coach) to support them in deepening their understanding of how to teach civics and history with their students.
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No. Whether or not you’ve studied or taught the topic before, all educators can learn something new from each course, which will cover both the core content and how to teach that content effectively in K-12 and/or higher ed environments, depending on the focus of the offering.
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The online course, “We the People: Civic Engagement in Constitutional Democracy” is entirely self-paced. Click here to visit the HarvardEx platform on which the course is offered in order to learn more and register: HarvardX: We the People: Civic Engagement in a Constitutional Democracy.
Beginning later in Fall 2025, CLI will be offering asynchronous modules for elementary and for middle school/high school teachers on a number of civics education topics.
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Educating for American Democracy is an ambitious, ongoing effort to provide students across our nation with access to high-quality history and civics learning opportunities, created by a cross-ideological group of educators, scholars, and practitioners who came together to re-design history and civics education. The resulting Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy synthesizes the work of experts from history, political science, law, and education to provide content guidance and instructional and implementation strategies for educators.
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Cancellation, Transfer, & Refund Policy: If your plans have changed and you are unable to participate in the experience(s) for which you registered and you request a cancellation, the Civic Learning Institute provides the following options:
If your request is made up to five days prior to the learning experience, we will transfer your registration to another experience of your choosing. You will have up to 10 business days to email us with your selections for the experience(s) for which you would like to register (space allowing).
If you are not interested in a different learning experience, we will refund your fees with a $3 charge for the processing of the refund through the credit card payment system.
If you request a cancellation between one - four days prior to the learning experience, we will do our best to transfer your registration to a different experience of your choosing. We are unable to offer refunds in this timeframe.
If you request a cancellation on the day of the experience or after the experience has begun, we are unable to provide a transfer to another experience or a refund.
For correspondence about cancellation, transfer, and refund requests, please write directly to civiclearning@gse.harvard.edu. In your email, please provide the registration confirmation number and the full name and email address in which the registration was made. If there are extenuating circumstances, please describe these in the email. See the extenuating circumstances policy below.
Participant Substitution Policy: If you registered for a CLI learning experience and are no longer able to participate but have a colleague who would like to take your place, we will implement the substitution up to two days prior to the launch of the course. For correspondence about participant substitution requests, please write directly to civiclearning@gse.harvard.edu. -
Since CLI’s experiences include participants with many cultural backgrounds, we recognize that there are religious and national holidays that the course dates will fall on and/or include. Should there be a holiday that you celebrate, please work with your coach to adjust the deadlines and due dates as is best for the observance and your time away.
Extenuating Circumstances Policy
Extenuating circumstances are events or situations that are unexpected and serious, and cause enough disruption to participants’ lives that they are unable to participate in their learning for a period of time. Examples of extenuating circumstances include (but are not limited to):
medical/health emergencies
bereavement due to loss of a close family member
natural disasters
local, municipal, state or national political crises or other crises that prevent regular activity
If a participant experiences extenuating circumstances, we ask that the participant email civiclearning@gse.harvard.edu about the situation as soon as they reasonably can. We will work together with the participant to develop a plan that responds to the participant’s needs. Other events may also prevent participants from participating in the course, but CLI does not consider these extenuating in that, most often, these events are scheduled well in advance. Such events include (but are not limited to):
vacations (either personal or school)
accompanying students on a scheduled school field trip/camp trip
weddings and honeymoons
any other event that is planned in advance
CLI-HGSE's policy was created to be flexible enough that, in most cases, participants should still be able to make up the work and get credit for it for online courses. For example, session assignments for online courses may be submitted in advance or up to one session late and still earn credit toward a certificate (assuming the certificate is an important goal for the participant). For one-time or one-day workshops, we are not able to accommodate make-up work.
In online courses, if planned events will take participants away from their course work for more than a few days during the course term, we ask that participants communicate their schedule challenges to civiclearning@gse.harvard.edu as soon as they can (and before the absence takes place), so that we can work with the participant to determine how to submit assignments within a timeframe that will most effectively support the participant’s learning and ensure credit toward the certificate.