What are PD Talks? 

PD Talks: Professional Development Sessions is a free monthly professional development webinar series for language educators given on the last Friday of each month to an international audience of 100-150 English teachers. The series focuses on promoting best practices in the field of TESOL by sharing practical teaching strategies and key concepts for reflection on important issues in the world of language teaching.

Who are some of our past speakers? 

Over the years we have had the honor of collaborating with illustrious presenters including renowned linguist Dr. Stephen Krashen (University of Southern California), TESOL International Past Presidents and authors Dr. Kathleen M. Bailey (Middlebury Institute of International Studies); Dr. Neil J. Anderson (Brigham Young University) and Dr. Gabriela Kleckova (University of West Bohemia), New York State TESOL Past President and author Dr. Laura Baecher (Hunter College City University of New York), authors Dr. Keith Folse (University of Central Florida), Betsy Parrish (Hamline University), Nik Peachey (Peachey Publications), experienced language teachers, teacher educators, and consultants Laura G. Holland and Janine Sepúlveda (University of Oregon), Dr. Radmila Popovic, Dr. Kara McBride, Neil O’Flaherty, and Germán Gómez (World Learning), Mary Scholl, Josh Kurzweil, Dr. Suzan Kobashigawa, Roger Ramírez, Matthew Shaefer (Institute for Collaborative Learning), and many others.

Who is the target audience? 

In the nearly eight years we have been running the series we have collaborated with over 50 presenters and reached an audience of more than 6,000 attendees. Although the original purpose of the series was to connect the English teaching community in Costa Rica, in 2023 alone we had teachers connect from 43 countries! Our attendees teach English in a diverse range of contexts including K12 public schools, language institutes, vocational schools, and universities but they all share a love for language teaching and they are committed to their ongoing professional growth through participation with members of this international community of practice.

Why do we do this? 

Centro Cultural Costarricense Norteamericano is a non-profit language and cultural center based in San José, Costa Rica with a 78-year history of promoting arts and culture, English instruction, and professional development for language teachers. We were founded by the US State Department in 1945 and we are an active member of ABLA, the Association of Binational Centers of Latin America. In addition to our work with English language students, we are committed to teacher development and the promotion of best practices in the field of TESOL which we address through two long running projects: 

• Our annual National Conference for Teachers of English since 1985
• Our monthly PD Talks webinar series since 2016

Are you interested? 

Do you want to join our next talk? CLICK HERE to sign up for our mailing list so you can receive alerts about all of our upcoming events.