Free National Webinars

Zoom link will be shared with registered participants the day of the webinar.
Certificate of Completion is included.

Webinars offered in partnership with

Empower students with the social entrepreneurial skills and mindsets
needed to drive meaningful change!  

Thursday, September 25, 2025
6:00-7:00pm ET

Join us to learn about opportunities to equip students to make a real impact through social entrepreneurship in the classroom by partnering with local and/or underserved communities worldwide in 8 countries: Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Ecuador, Kenya, Peru, Uganda, Ukraine, and the United States. Students develop real-world skills in leadership, entrepreneurship, workplace readiness, and global citizenship while helping solve modern challenges. 

Free resources are easily customizable for classes, clubs, or CTSOs with minimal teacher effort and involving as much or as little class time as educators prefer.  

Entrepreneurial skills are modernized workforce readiness skills!

Tuesday, October 14, 2025
6:00-7:00pm ET - Webinar
7:00-7:30pm ET - Breakout Groups (optional)

The new National Career Clusters® Framework and the Innovation & Gig Economy require adult learners to graduate with an entrepreneurial mindset and design thinking skills across technical career fields as intrapreneurial employees, leaders, innovators, trailblazers, and entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial skills are an increasingly essential part of workforce development and overlap with the 12 Career-Ready Practices that employers say they want in new hires in a rapidly changing, innovation-based workplace. 

During this session, educators will:

• Review best-practices for integrating the entrepreneurial mindset and design thinking skills aligned with the 12 Career-Ready Practices across Career Clusters in a way that optimizes student engagement by facilitating students’ pursuit of their own unique career interests.

• Network and collaborate in small breakout groups to brainstorm specific examples of where to integrate the entrepreneurial mindset as a Cross-Cutting Cluster in their respective programs and classes (optional).

• Receive free, classroom-ready resources, including an entrepreneurship e-textbook, to teach the entrepreneurial mindset and design thinking skills, as well as the Exam Resources Package for the U.S. Entrepreneurship Certification Examination.

Enhance your teaching toolkit with some of the greatest hits in
current events resources and strategies! 

Wednesday, October 16, 2024
7:00-8:00pm ET

Teachers are super busy and do not have a lot of time to keep up with current events to use in the classroom the next day.  Yet, current events are an important and effective way to contextualize secondary subjects for real-world learning, including economics.  This webinar features three presenters who share free resources and strategies for successfully teaching current events in real-time with minimal teacher preparation and maximum student engagement.  Dr. Jadrian Wooten will present his timely “Monday Morning Economist” newsletter and accompanying teacher resources that easily integrate current events and pop culture into economics lessons.  Ms. Ariel Slonim will share Marginal Revolution University’s (MRU) “Econ in the News” subscription that combs through the news to find relevant current events for teaching economics on a regular basis as well as how to structure related productive student discussions.  Dr. Cheryl Ayers will share her research-based, economic-way-of-thinking instructional strategies and tools for making any current event more accessible to students.  Join us to enhance your teaching toolkit! 

Join us to learn easy yet highly engaging ways to prepare students for the Innovation & Gig Economy without teaching a traditional entrepreneurship class! 

Thursday, October 24, 2024
7:00-8:00pm ET

Entrepreneurship is an engaging real-world lens through which to teach economics and personal finance.  Nearly 50% of Gen-Z’ers say they are interested in starting their own businesses. More broadly, entrepreneurial skills are modernized workforce readiness skills that employers say they want new hires to have in the Innovation & Gig Economy.  This webinar focuses on innovative and engaging ways to easily empower students in secondary subjects—including core academics, gifted, CTE, economics, and personal finance—with the entrepreneurship concepts, skills, and mindsets needed for today’s workforce without having to teach a traditional entrepreneurship class.  Examples of the free, innovative instructional resources and strategies include self-study materials for an entrepreneurship independent study; community and university partnerships that offer counseling, resources, webinars, mentors, and guest speakers; field trips to incubators and maker-spaces for budding student-entrepreneurs; co-curricular book clubs; recommended curriculum framework; educational activities that qualify for work-based learning credits in entrepreneurship; social and environmental entrepreneurship as service learning projects; easy Shark Tank and innovation challenges; new entrepreneurship certification credentials for high school students; professional development for teachers; and more!  Webinar participants will also receive free entrepreneurship lessons and simulations. 

Join us to receive current lessons on international economics and learn more about taking a free trip to Germany! 

Tuesday, November 19, 2024
7:00-8:00pm ET

Have you ever wanted to take a 2-week educational trip to Germany in the summer—at no cost to you?  Join us for this informational webinar on the Transatlantic Outreach Program (TOP), a public/private partnership that provides 5-star study tours to Germany for K-12 social studies and STEM teachers.  Webinar participants will also gain access to following free K-12 lessons and resources to facilitate real-world instruction:  international economics and trade published by the Council on Economic Education’s (CEE) EconEdLink; German history, sustainability, economics, geography, civics, government, and contemporary society published by TOP; and the European Union published by the Virginia Tech Center for European and Transatlantic Studies.  Other international economic opportunities for students will be shared, such as study and career opportunities both domestic and abroad for students studying German in high school and college as well as ways to participate in mock European Union Council debates. 

Calling all teachers and students to join us to learn about the many opportunities available at Virginia Tech in agricultural economics and agribusiness!

Wednesday, November 6, 2024
4:00-5:00pm ET

Calling all teachers and students! Join us to hear about the many opportunities available at Virginia Tech in our broad food and agriculture fields. Did you know that agriculture is the number one industry in Virginia?  Did you know that less than 2% of the population farms and provides food, fiber and fuel for all the rest of us?  And did you know that it takes hundreds of related career fields to get the farmers' products into the hands of consumers?  According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there are an expected 59,400 ag-related career openings every year and not enough college graduates to fill them.  Nearly 25,000 of those are expected to be in the business and management areas.  Virginia Tech's Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics (Ag Econ) offers undergraduate degrees in agribusiness and related areas to prepare students for these rewarding careers. Once in the workforce, the Ag Econ department and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences offer online master's degrees and certificates to help you advance your career. These educational opportunities are perfect for teachers and students who want to enhance skills in specific areas of expertise.

A brief overview of the Spring 2025 Online Entrepreneurship Institute for High School Teachers will be shared, along with the U.S. Entrepreneurship Certification Examination for high school students and adult learners.  Pairing entrepreneurship with CTE career fields, including agriculture, prepares students for the Innovation & Gig Economy, whether working for someone else or starting their own business now or in the future.  Come and see what opportunities may work for you!

Integrate current events and design thinking across subjects to prepare students
for the Innovation & Gig Economy!

Thursday, February 23, 2025
2:00-4:00pm ET

Entrepreneurship is an engaging, real-world context for teaching economics, personal finance, CTE, and core academic subjects across grade levels using current events while simultaneously equipping students with the workforce readiness skills they need for the Innovation & Gig economy, whether as an entrepreneur or intrapreneurial employee.  A form of inquiry, project, and service-based learning, teachers will understand the basics of design thinking then practice applying this 5-step process in small breakout groups, culminating with a brainstorming session on multidisciplinary curriculum connections. Teachers will receive a collection of classroom-ready resources, instructional strategies, and current events resources.  Details about the national Online Entrepreneurship Institute for Middle & High School Teachers and the aligned U.S. Entrepreneurship Certification Examination for high school students and adult learners will also be shared.

Prepare students for the Innovation & Gig Economy as Entrepreneurs
and Intrapreneurial Employees!

This webinar will review research-based reasons why and how teachers can seamlessly integrate entrepreneurship concepts, skills, and mindsets into their CTE courses and pathways, so students are prepared for the Innovation & Gig Economy in any technical career field.  50+ Free entrepreneurship resources, professional development opportunities, and details about the U.S. Entrepreneurship Certification Examination will be shared.

Contact Dr. Cheryl Ayers at cheryl42@vt.edu to register or schedule a webinar for your state. 

Personal finance skills are workforce development skills!

Monday, February 3, 2025
3:00-4:30pm ET

This session explores the many needs for integrating financial literacy into instruction for all learners. Our panelists work with learners across the adult education spectrum: pre-literacy English learners, English learners with higher levels of education, and ABE and ASE learners. They discuss takeaways from the Financial Literacy Institute offered through AAACE, the various needs for financial literacy within their adult learner populations, and classroom applications and resources to support learners’ financial literacy goals. 

Participants will:

• come away from the session with an understanding of essential financial literacy topics and classroom applications.

• engage in discussion about the many reasons that adult learners need financial literacy instruction that is relevant to their education, life, and career goals.

• come away with resources and instructional strategies to integrate financial literacy concepts into their programming and instruction. 

• learn about the Online Personal Finance Institute for Adult Educators & Service Providers and the U.S. Personal Finance Certification Examination for Adults with Limited Education, Income & Literacy.