Overview

The Library of Congress awards grants under the Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Regional program to school districts, universities, cultural institutions, library systems and other educational organizations who wish to incorporate TPS materials and methods into their existing education and professional development programs for pre and in-service teachers, librarians, media specialists and other K-12 educators.

The TPS Regional program provides assistance and grants of up to $20,000 through its regional coordinators in the East, Midwest and West. The program promotes the widespread, sustained and effective use of primary sources from the Library of Congress within the educational community by increasing access to the TPS program for teachers who are not served by members of the TPS Educational Consortium. Grant recipients may use TPS funding to meet a variety of programmatic needs, including:

• Delivering online or face-to-face TPS workshops
• Embedding TPS materials and content into broader professional development programs
• Revising undergraduate or graduate course syllabi or curricula to include a TPS focus

For example:

• A historical society in Massachusetts created teaching materials and curriculum units based on primary sources from their own collection as well as the Library of Congress collection, From Slavery to Freedom. Later, they incorporated TPS methods and materials into a professional development program that shows teachers how to teach these units more effectively.
• A school district in Alaska included a TPS workshop in its annual professional development program, which showed teachers working under a Teaching American History grant how to navigate www.loc.gov and strengthen their pedagogical use of digitized primary sources.
• A university in Kentucky modified its undergraduate and graduate teaching methods courses offered to pre- and in-service teachers to incorporate the use of primary sources from the Library of Congress.
• The Arizona Department of Education, the Arizona Council for the Social Studies, the Arizona Geographic Alliance, the Arizona Historical Society, and several schools districts and universities with Teaching American History grants joined together to offer TPS professional development across the state supported by collaborative grants.

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