This press release originally appeared on the Library of Congress website.
The Library of Congress Professional Learning and Outreach Initiatives Office, under the Center for Learning Literacy and Engagement, has awarded Teaching with Primary Sources grants to 23 first-time and 19 continuing grantee organizations located in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. The current grants awarded in September provide one year of funding, with the possibility of two additional one-year grants, contingent upon successful delivery of Teaching with Primary Sources educational projects based on Library of Congress digitized materials.
New grantees represent a diversity of organizational types, geographic locations and project emphases. They will use Library of Congress primary sources to deliver educational projects focused on civics, economics, disability history, law, writing, local and place-based history, media literacy, data visualization, state archives holdings, Congressional centers activities and supporting student inquiry.
The learners they will serve include rural educators, English language learners, film and journalism students, African American students, Native American teachers and students, very young students, and those with learning and other disabilities.
Organizations receiving their first Teaching with Primary Sources grants are:
- C3 Teachers, North Carolina – Building Blocks for Inquiry Project
- DC History Center, District of Columbia – Empowering Historical Explorations: Enhancing D.C.’s National History Day
- Digital Inquiry Group, California – Reading Like a Historian for All
- Grand Valley State University, Michigan – Teaching Critical Data Literacy through the Slow Reveal Method and Primary Source Data Visualization
- Harding University, Arkansas – How Teaching with Primary Sources Facilitates Rural and Underserved School Retention
- History UnErased, Massachusetts – The Past is Always Present, dramatizing the hidden histories of LGBTQ Americans
- Keene State College, New Hampshire – Teaching Disability History in Rural Communities: Primary Source Investigations by all learners
- Maine Department of Education, Maine – Celebrating Rural Maine: Community Civics and Place-Based Inquiry
- Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Mississippi – Expanding Primary Source Education in Mississippi
- Montana State University, Montana – Constitutional Commitments & Demographic Dilemmas: Advancing Indian Education for All and Historical Thinking in Montana’s Rural Schools
- New Visions for Public Schools, New York – Teaching Literacy Through U.S. History
- Northwest Missouri State University, Missouri – Amplifying Rural Histories through Inquiry and Primary Sources
- Old Dominion University, Virginia – Empowering Teacher Educators with Primary Sources: Bridging the Gap in Understanding and Teaching Rural School Desegregation
- Red Clay Consolidated School District, Delaware – Empowering Young Delaware Citizens: Inquiry-Based Explorations with the Library of Congress
- Retro Report, New York – Unlocking Potential: Addressing Learning Differences Through Film and Primary Sources
- San Francisco State University – California, Collaborative Local History and Action Civics with Library of Congress Documents
- State University of New York Geneseo, New York – Examining Primary Sources to Inform Pre-service and In-service Teachers to Understand Teaching Local History
- Temple University, Pennsylvania – Exploring Histories of Black Civic Organizations: Curriculum Leadership in K-12 Social Studies
- Uniondale Union Free School District, New York – Enhancing teachers’ ability to integrate digitized primary sources from the Library of Congress into instruction.
- University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning, Kansas – Citizen Journalism for All Students: Making Journalism in Action’s Library of Congress resources more accessible and relevant for students with disabilities
- University of Puerto Rico, Humacao Campus, Puerto Rico – Leveraging Educators’ Access to Primary Sources: Integrating Library of Congress’ Online Collections for the Development of ESL Competencies and Researching Skills in Puerto Rico’s Secondary Schools
- University of Tennessee, Tennessee – Teaching with Film and Media as Primary Sources
- U.S. Capitol Historical Society, District of Columbia – Capitol Civics Workshops: Congressional Primary Sources for Teachers
With these competitive awards, the grantees become members of the Teaching with Primary Sources Consortium, a group of institutional partners that assist the Library in strengthening efforts to connect with all learners. They will join a cohort of 19 organizations that competed to receive a fourth year of funding to continue the Teaching with Primary Sources projects they began in 2022.
These continuing grantees will be instrumental in maintaining 18 years of Teaching with Primary Sources Consortium practices and traditions.
- American Writers Museum
- Bard College
- ESSDACK, Kansas
- Georgia Council on Economic Education
- Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY)
- Local Learning: The National Network for Folk Arts in Education
- Massachusetts Council for the Social Studies
- National Center of Education and the Economy (Educurious)
- North Carolina State University
- National Council for the Social Studies
- National Council of Teachers of English
- National History Day
- Philadelphia Writing Project, Graduate School of Education, the University of Pennsylvania
- Right Question Institute
- Street Law, Inc.
- University of Delaware
- University of Mississippi, Center for Mathematics and Science Education
- University of South Florida
- Vancouver Public Schools
Since 2006, Congress has appropriated funds to the Teaching with Primary Sources program to establish and fund a consortium of organizations working to incorporate “the digital collections of the Library of Congress into educational curricula.”
The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States — and extensive materials from around the world — both on-site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov; access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov; and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.
