CSEL Events
Check Out Our CSEL Schedule!
Back to School with CSEL Scratch Edition
September 21, 2026
4:00 PM – 5:30 PM
Virtual Workshop
Description:
Attention 3-12 Teachers! Dust off your creative coding brains and get ready for some back-to-basics Scratch challenges. Enjoy playful problem solving and brainstorm ways to bring this language into your content-area instruction for multilingual learners.
Engage in hands-on standards-based computational thinking practices and have fun with playful problem solving!
1.5 PD Hours
Open to all IL teachers
Presenter: Diana Silvas and Susan Garr
CSEL PD Series: Creative Coding for Curious Classrooms (K-12)
A hands-on professional learning series that helps educators bring creative coding and computational thinking into meaningful classroom experiences — for multilingual learners, at any grade level, in any content area, with any level of coding experience.
The series kicks off with an in-person workshop, where participants experience computational thinking as learners, explore the creative possibilities of ScratchJr, and start designing a classroom-ready learning experience aligned to their own curriculum. Two optional virtual follow-up sessions give educators time to try new ideas in their classrooms, then return to a supportive community to share what they learned, gain fresh ideas from colleagues, and keep building their creative coding practice.
Join us whenever you can — attend one session or all three. Everyone is welcome. No coding experience required — just curiosity!
8.5 CPDUs available across the full series.
Series at a Glance
| Sign up for each session individually | Date | Time | Format | CPDUs |
| Session 1: In Person Kick off-Explore, Experiment, Design, and Share | Sat, Sept 26, 2026 | 9:30 AM – 2:00 PM | In person — IRC Center, Arlington Heights | 4.5 |
| Session 2: Virtual Follow Up Workshop: ScratchJr Challenge & Classroom Connections | Thu, Oct 15, 2026 | 4:00 – 6:00 PM | Virtual | 2 |
| Session 3: Virtual Follow Up Workshop–Create, Share & Inspire | Thu, Nov 19, 2026 | 4:00 – 6:00 PM | Virtual | 2 |
Session 1 — In-Person Kickoff
Explore, Experiment, Design, and Share
Saturday, September 26, 2026 · 9:30 AM – 2:00 PM · 4.5 CPDUs 📍 IRC Center, 2626 S Clearbrook Dr, Arlington Heights, IL
In this session, participants experience computational thinking as learners, explore ScratchJr, and begin designing a classroom-ready learning experience for their students. Through collaboration, reflection, and peer feedback, educators gain practical tools and develop a playful mindset — tinkering, experimenting, iterating, and reflecting — as they build the confidence to integrate creative coding into meaningful teaching and learning experiences.
Session 2 — Virtual Follow-Up
ScratchJr Challenge & Classroom Connections
Thursday, October 15, 2026 · 4:00 – 6:00 PM · 2 CPDUs · Virtual
In this interactive virtual session, participants take part in a fun ScratchJr design challenge, enjoy dedicated tinkering time to experiment with new features and ideas, and hear from classroom teachers who have piloted creative coding in their own content-area teaching. Whether you’ve already tried your lesson or are still planning your first implementation, you’ll leave with fresh ideas, renewed confidence, and inspiration.
