“Maps to me are now dynamic, vibrant, alive and worth engaging” –Teacher Workshop Participant

The Leventhal Map & Education Center offers a variety of professional development opportunities for educators. From one-day workshops to summer-long fellowships, Map Center professional development is designed to support educators in using geographic approaches and materials in various subject areas and for various purposes.

Workshops

Small Bites: An after-school series of gatherings for educators interested in teaching about Boston through a geospatial and social justice lens.

For the 2021-22 school year the Map Center is offering a series of FREE “small bites” professional development sessions. These 6 sessions will run after school and will be a mix of in-person and Zoom sessions designed to send you off with great map-based lessons and resources to immediately implement in your classroom. All K-12 teachers are welcome. Sign up for one or all of them!

The Educator Social and Map Giveaway at the Leventhal Map & Education Center (in person)

Thursday, September 23, 3:00 to 5:30 pm

Drop in when you can and stay as long, or as little, as you like!

Our first get-together is an opportunity for you to meet us and each other, tour our new exhibition Bending Lines: Maps and Data from Distortion to Deception, load up your vehicle with free classroom maps (from class sets to beautiful large wall maps of the world), and enjoy some small bites!
Sign up here!

Visualizing Change in Boston (virtual)

Thursday, October 7, 2021, 3:00 to 4:30 pm

Come try out our lesson developed for Boston high school students that explores four case studies using maps and other resources that show community action and change in Boston, from the Southwest Corridor to the Dudley Triangle. You can take away this ready-to-go lesson along with other versions of Visualizing Boston and use it right away in your classroom.
Sign up here!

Redlining Maps & their Legacy (virtual)

Thursday, November 18, 2021, 3:00 to 4:30 pm

Explore Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) maps of the 1930s and 40s and try out a lesson developed for the classroom using the Mapping Inequality interactive website. We will also look at the legacy of redlining with supplemental resources that explain the persistent disinvestment that resulted from the anti-Black and anti-immigrant bias accepted by the banking and real estate sectors at the time and the ways discrimination in these sectors continues today.
Sign up here!

Critical Map Reading & Media Literacy (virtual)

Thursday, January 13, 2022, 3:00 to 4:30 pm

Maps are a type of media students will come across often. Try out a mini-lesson designed to give students the tools to be critical map readers. We’ll also share a research protocol for students looking for maps online to help them assess if they trust what the map is showing and how to ask critical questions.
Sign up here!

Learn to Make a Digital Map Mini-session (in-person)

Thursday, March 10, 2022, 3:00 to 4:30 pm

Do you want to help students explore social issues through mapping? We’ll introduce you to some basics of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and show you how to create a lesson where students can map two layers of geospatial information about Boston such as race and ethnicity data.
Sign up here!

Environmental Justice in Boston (virtual)

Thursday, May 12, 2022, 3:00 to 4:30

For our final session of the school year, we’ll explore education connections to our upcoming exhibition More or Less in Common: Environment and Justice in the Human Landscape. Explore how environmental harm is borne unequally by different communities, both in the past and the present, and consider how to foster placed-based environmental thinking in students that is coupled with social justice via a map-based lesson.
Sign up here!

Past Workshops

See a list of past workshops here, with links to workshop materials.

Carolyn A. Lynch Summer Teacher Fellowship

Check back in the spring for information on the 2022 Fellowship cycle.