Virginia Tech Center for Economic Education
Sep 30, 2025
9:00 am - 3:00 pm
Registration Deadline: September 16, 2025
Roanoke Higher Education Center
108 N. Jefferson Street
Roanoke, VA 24016
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Grade Level: High School, Middle School, Post-high School
Potential Recertification Credits: 6
6 hours of free professional development
$75 stipend upon completion | Lunch Provided
Free classroom‐ready resources
Room 709
AGENDA
8:30 AM – 9:00 AM Registration
9:00 AM – 11:30 AM Session I: Overcoming Polarization with Civil Discourse
- Discover and explore strategies to build a culture and practice for facilitating meaningful conversations through viewpoint diverse civil discourse in your middle or high school classroom.
- Create pathways to empower students’ individual voices and gain valuable discussion strategies and techniques to manage the conversation.
- Analyze the nexus between civil discourse and economic principles to walk away with new ideas to encourage your students to think critically about our most pressing economic issues.
11:30 AM – 12:30 PM Lunch (provided)
12:30 PM – 2:45 PM Session II: Building Economic Understanding Across History and Social Sciences
- Explore impactful strategies for incorporating economics into your social studies classes with real-world economics lessons and through the lenses of trade, protectionism, tariff policies, national debt, and globalization. We’ll unpack how key economic policies and decisions in history were shaped and draw conclusions about their impact.
- Discover methods to inspire civil discourse and connect key economics concepts to historical, geographical, and cultural contexts across time. Through economic policies and real-world challenges, we’ll explore ways to help students grapple with pressing issues such as immigration, tax policy, foreign policy, among others, and how these challenges have, and continue to impact decision-making.
2:45 PM – 3:00 PM Conclusion: Evaluation, Certificates, Stipends
Co-sponsored by Sphere Education Initiatives, Virginia Tech Center for Economic Education,
and Virginia Council for Economic Education
Fee: NO CHARGE
Additional Information:
Additional room and parking details will be shared shortly before the program date.
Instructor: Dr. Cheryl Ayers
Contact Person:
Dr. Cheryl Ayers
Center for Economic Education
Virginia Tech
cheryl42@vt.edu
OFFERED BY:
SPONSORS
This program is offered at no cost with support from Sphere Education Initiatives .
Register for Connecting the Dots: Economics, Virginia Standards, and Fostering Civil Discourse in Your Classroom
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