In this addition to our CSD Educators series, we hear from Dr Louise Dawe, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Louise is a collaborator and champion of the CSD—helping to develop some of our classroom modules. Here, she outlines current examples of collaborative crystallography workshops and schools in the Americas that can help educators plan future structural science events. It is based on a lecture presented by the author at the 2020 IUCr Congress and General Assembly.