Northwest awarded Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources grant

Northwest Missouri State University recently received its first-ever Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) grant, which is helping local educators better understand how to teach with primary sources.

Dr. Tina Ellsworth, an assistant professor of education, will manage Northwest’s TPS project, “Amplifying Rural Histories through Inquiry and Primary Sources.” The grant, totaling nearly $100,000, was awarded by the Library of Congress’s Professional Learning and Outreach Initiatives Office last fall. The current grant provides one year of funding, with the possibility of two additional years of funding, for Teaching with Primary Sources educational projects based on Library of Congress digitized materials.

Teachers from 14 districts across northwest Missouri gathered at the University in December for the first in a series of workshops being organized with support from a Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) grant. (Submitted photo)

TPS-NWMSU workshops are familiarizing teachers with sources from the Library of Congress that highlight rural America while helping teachers learn inquiry-based practices for using primary sources to amplify their own histories and incorporate primary sources into their curriculum. (Submitted photo)

“I was so thrilled that it put Northwest on the national map when it comes to teaching with primary sources,” Ellsworth said. “It’s great exposure for the University and great exposure for the good work that the teachers in this area are doing.”

The Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources grant enables Northwest to provide opportunities for PK-16 educators to attend a two-day workshop throughout the next year to learn how to teach with primary sources. Teachers from 14 districts across northwest Missouri participated in the first workshop in December at the University. Teachers representing 12 districts in Illinois, Missouri and Kansas participated in the January workshop in Topeka, Kansas. A third workshop is scheduled for April 2-3 in Platte County, Missouri.

Ellsworth is directing the project with Dr. Scott M. Waring, a professor of social science education at the University of Central Florida, acting as the project’s associate director.

“It’s really about just helping to equip teachers for teaching their own local history,” Ellsworth said. “It doesn’t have to just be what happened in big, more urban areas. Kids can then see that important things happen in rural America too.”

In collaboration with rural school districts, individual schools and educators, and state and national organizations, TPS-NWMSU workshops familiarize teachers with sources from the Library of Congress that highlight rural America. Teachers learn inquiry-based practices for using primary sources to amplify their own histories and incorporate primary sources into their curriculum.

The project also provides ongoing professional development through webinars, a YouTube channel, website, conference presentations and professional publications in journals and books. Another goal of the workshops is to develop PK-16 coaches who can provide professional development in districts throughout northwest Missouri, southeast Nebraska, northeast Kansas and southwest Iowa.

Participating teachers are learning how to use primary sources in new ways that are engaging for students. The model helps build students’ abilities to think critically and use their research while making them curious about the past and how it has shaped the present.

“When you teach kids how to critically analyze and evaluate evidence from the past, they can also transfer that skill to evidence that they’re seeing now,” Ellsworth said, “It’s really integral to protecting our democracy that we have a very skilled citizenry who can critically analyze sources that are in front of them.”

Ellsworth joined the Northwest faculty in 2021 and teaches undergraduate social studies methods and curriculum courses as well as a variety of graduate courses. Having earned a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis in social studies education from the University of Kansas, her research interests center on pedagogical knowledge for history education, racial pedagogical content knowledge and teaching with primary resources.

According to Ellsworth, students learn best when they have the opportunity to be involved with content-specific skills. Having access to primary sources encourages students to ask better questions, find answers to their questions and act upon their new knowledge.

“We need students to understand how history is created and narratives are created through the evidence of the past,” Ellsworth said. “By teaching students how to examine that evidence, they can craft their own narratives and they can know if what they’re seeing is true.”

For more information about the program at Northwest, visit v34o.parkviewhousebb.com/tps.

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.

Since 2006, the U.S. 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.” Each year, members of the TPS Consortium support tens of thousands of learners to build knowledge, engagement and critical thinking skills with items from the Library’s collections.