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About Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources
The Library of Congress's Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) program works with an educational consortium of schools, universities, libraries, and foundations to help teachers use the Library of Congress' vast collection of digitized primary sources to enrich their classroom instruction.
Teaching with Primary Sources builds on the success of the Library's previous outreach initiatives, particularly the American Memory Fellows and An Adventure of the American Mind programs, which reached more than 10,000 teachers.
The Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) program offers professional development opportunities for pre- and in-service K-12 teachers and librarians that include workshops, seminars, online courses, graduate courses, and mentoring. These activities are designed and implemented by members of an educational consortium, administered by the Library of Congress, made up of K-12 schools, universities, foundations and libraries.
Currently, there are 15 TPS partners in five states: Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The Library of Congress is in the process of developing a Virtual Institute through which teachers who do not live within proximity to existing consortium members can take online courses.
Professional development activities under Teaching with Primary Sources progress along three program levels. Teachers have the option of taking courses under all or some of these levels, depending on their interests.
TPS Professional Development Goals & Objectives | TPS Program Mission & Goals
Thanks to Congressman John P. Murtha!
.jpg) | Photos with Congressman Murtha at the presentation of a gift of appreciation from the Adventure of the American Mind project at California University of Pennsylvania. |
Adventure of the American Mind evolves into Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources
In 2003, Congressman John P. Murtha brought funding for the Adventure of the American Mind project to Southwestern Pennsylvania through a partnership with California University of Pennsylvania and Waynesburg University and he further offered his support through additional funding he secured in 2006.
The Adventure of the American Mind mission has been to train K-12 teachers, pre-service teachers, and college teacher education faculty at schools in southwestern Pennsylvania to access, use, and produce K-12 curriculum utilizing the Internet and the online primary source materials from the digitized collections of the Library of Congress. The Teaching with Primary Sources mission builds on that mission by fostering collaborations between the Library of Congress and the educational community to increase instructional use of the Library’s digital primary sources. The TPS program contributes to the quality of education by deepening content understanding and improving student literacy in our nation’s schools. Both missions are similar and consistent with the principal goal of California University’s College of Education and Human Services, which is to maintain a diversity of contemporary curricula appropriate to the preparation of new teachers and the improvement of teachers already in the field.
The Teaching with Primary Sources Program builds on the successes of the Adventure of the American Mind project and continues the mission in a more focused way by centering on student-centered learning activities and pedagogies that support teachers as learning facilitators capable of setting up and maintaining learning environments where students become active, self-directed learners.
The vision for Teaching with Primary Sources remains the same as the vision for Adventure of the American Mind. The vision is that all K-16 educators in southwestern Pennsylvania and all pre-service teachers enrolled in teacher education programs at California University's College of Education and Human Services will learn to access and use primary source materials from the digitized collections of the Library of Congress along with the Internet and appropriate instructional pedagogies to encourage students to question, observe details, and think critically to improve student achievement.