Course Overview Archives

Nurturing New Teacher Growth All Year Long with lilyPD

Nurturing New Teacher Growth All Year Long with lilyPD If you’ve ever been a new classroom teacher, you probably remember the mix of excitement and uncertainty that came with those first few weeks. There was the anticipation of decorating your classroom, meeting your students, and putting your ideas into practice… AND also the reality that […]

Written By Ali Blankinship

at William & Mary

New K-12 Administrator Implementation lilyPD community lilyPD teacher School Implementation

See It, Name It, Prove It: Making Primary Sources Click for Multilingual Learners

Let’s be honest. Social studies is one of the hardest content areas for Multilingual Learners (MLLs). It is not just the vocabulary, though there is a lot of it. It is everything at once: dense texts, abstract concepts like democracy and citizenship, multiple perspectives to hold in your head, and then on top of all […]

Written By Allison O’Connor

at William & Mary

6-12 multilingual learners teaching takeaway

We Asked. Teachers Answered. Here’s What They Say About lilyPD.

When lilyPD launched in March 2026, it launched with a dream of changing the way teachers receive professional development. We wanted it to be research-backed and fun. Practical and engaging. Flexible and immediately applicable to your classroom. We are so thankful for the community that has already gathered here and for the generous, overwhelmingly positive […]

Written By lilyPD

lilyPD community

5 Ways to Weave lilyPD into Your School’s PD Ecosystem

5 Ways to Weave lilyPD into Your School’s PD Ecosystem As a school leader, you already know the challenge: professional development time is precious, schedules are packed, and the needs of your teachers vary. Resources that can adapt to different contexts give you something rare: real options for supporting your teachers’ growth. lilyPD: Professional Development […]

Written By Ali Blankinship

at William & Mary

K-12 Instructional Coaching lilyPD community lilyPD Instructional Leaders lilyPD teacher Professional Learning Community

Strategy Spotlight: Silent Round Tables

Today’s Strategy Spotlight, Silent Round Tables, comes from our microcourse Civil Discourse in the Classroom, which introduces educators to a research-backed framework for facilitating productive, respectful dialogue in classrooms of all levels. You can enroll in the course here or browse our library of related resources! The Challenge We all want our classrooms to buzz […]

Written By Rebekah O’Dell

at William & Mary

New Civil Discourse in the Classroom lilyPD strategy spotlight

A Reflection on Teaching the American Revolution at 250

Patriotism cannot be taught. What we can do is teach American history with fidelity and trust that, as students examine both the ideals expressed in our founding documents and the ways Americans have struggled to fulfill those ideals, they will develop a deeper appreciation for the nation’s enduring promises—and perhaps an even greater sense of responsibility for preserving and extending them.

Written By Sam Futrell

at William & Mary

K-12 america 250 american historical association content literacy free resource horizon of independence primary source analysis social studies teaching takeaway

If lilyPD Courses Were New York Times Bestsellers…

Every school year, I save a million tasks (house projects, doctor’s appointments, car maintenance, large-scale clean-outs of overloaded closets) and designate them as Problems for My Summer Self. I can’t possibly manage these tasks during the sprint of the school year. But in the summer, I know it will get done. Mostly, this is delusional. […]

Written By Rebekah O’Dell

at William & Mary

Artifact Analysis Civil Discourse in the Classroom Historical Inquiry in the Classroom lilyPD microcourse Nonfiction Reading Strategies Podcasting for Educators

Teaching Takeaway: Found Poems for Higher-Order Thinking

Poet Kate Baer has made a game of taking online hate-mail and transforming it into erasure poetry, a type of found poem. In a found poem, a writer takes key words from another text, arranges and rearranges them, and creates a completely new, original work. In her erasure poems, Baer takes something meant to attack […]

Written By Rebekah O’Dell

at William & Mary

New content literacy free resource Literacy microcourse primary source analysis teaching takeaway

3 Ways to Use lilyPD to Super-Charge Your Summer Learning

Let’s be honest: you need a break this summer. A true break. Time to sleep in, read a silly book, and soak up the long, slow evenings. You have had a school year that I bet was both challenging and rewarding. You have earned some rest. But time away can also be clarifying; it helps […]

Written By Rebekah O’Dell

at William & Mary

lilyPD community lilyPD teacher Professional Learning

Stop Rushing Past Artifacts: Why Slowing Down Changes Everything

Engaging with artifacts in the classroom can be used as a tool to move from surface‑level observations to deeper questions and reasoned interpretations, and it can be fun too!

Written By Allison O’Connor

at William & Mary

K-12 Artifact Analysis strategy spotlight

Explore Word Gaps for an Instant Reading Comprehension Boost

A “word gap” is a word or phrase that a student doesn’t know (Beers and Probst, 2015). A word gap might represent a brand new word the student has never seen before or a word they can understand from context but can’t define. The Collect and Explore Word Gaps strategy asks students to bring together the word gaps they find in a text and then explore them. This strategy is about more than simply learning new language, though. Collecting and exploring not only these individual words but the patterns they form can also help readers understand the big ideas of a text.

Written By Rebekah O’Dell

at William & Mary

K-12 content literacy Literacy strategy spotlight

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All blog posts (11)

Nurturing New Teacher Growth All Year Long with lilyPD

See It, Name It, Prove It: Making Primary Sources Click for Multilingual Learners

We Asked. Teachers Answered. Here’s What They Say About lilyPD.

5 Ways to Weave lilyPD into Your School’s PD Ecosystem

Strategy Spotlight: Silent Round Tables

A Reflection on Teaching the American Revolution at 250

If lilyPD Courses Were New York Times Bestsellers…

Teaching Takeaway: Found Poems for Higher-Order Thinking

3 Ways to Use lilyPD to Super-Charge Your Summer Learning

Stop Rushing Past Artifacts: Why Slowing Down Changes Everything

Explore Word Gaps for an Instant Reading Comprehension Boost

All blog posts (11)

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