African American Civil War Memorial Freedom Foundation
“Till” Screening and Educational Dialogue will engage local educators in exploring the legacy of Emmett Till and the modern Civil Rights Movement through a film screening, dialogue with filmmaker Keith Beauchamp, and hands-on primary source analysis sessions. The project equips teachers with historical context, critical thinking skills, and ready-to-use primary source sets to enrich classroom instruction on civil rights history.
826DC
826DC will provide PD for DC educators to demonstrate how writers across genres use primary sources to make their writing more vivid. Teachers will leave the sessions with an analysis of how a student text connects to primary source documents, a written mentor text by the teacher and a lesson plan.
George Mason University
The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and Media (RRCHNM) at George Mason University will create two teaching guides designed to support a more comprehensive and complete history of the American Revolution. These free online resources will feature activities for students to engage with Library primary sources to better understand in particular the Black Americans and Indigenous Americans fighting for their own independence on both sides of the conflict. The guides will be published on Teachinghistory.org in May 2026.
Maryland Humanities
Maryland Humanities annually hosts Maryland History Day, an educational program for grades 6–12 that engages over 28,000 students state-wide. Through project-based learning and in-depth research, students create original documentaries, exhibits, research papers, and performances on historical topics. The program supports Maryland teachers in professional development and partners with district coordinators to reach school districts statewide.
North Carolina State University
Challenging the Collective Memory Approach: Using Arab American Labor History to Expand US History Curricula
Our project aims to expand current conceptions of US History curricula by including often-neglected narratives of the Arab American experience, namely through expansion of our C3 framework lessons on Arab American Labor, the creation of skill- and content-specific primary source activities, and relevant training and professional development sessions conducted throughout Wake County schools in North Carolina. These training and materials–centering on primary source materials from the Library of Congress–will not only increase learners’ understanding and awareness of how Arab Americans have shaped and contributed to US history but also help demystify the inclusion of marginalized narratives and historical inquiry in the classroom.
PBS News Hour Classroom
PBS News Hour Classroom brings current events lessons to students in middle and high school. News Hour Education has also developed Journalism in Action, a TPS partner site that teaches civic knowledge and media literacy through journalistic sources from the Library of Congress. Our project “News Then and Now” aims to bridge our current events news site and Journalism in Action by offering two primary sources for students to compare — the PBS News segment featured in our news lessons, and historic media from the Library of Congress.
University of Delaware
In anticipation of the Semiquincentennial, the Teaching and Commemorating the U.S. Declaration of Independence project will develop 10 new lessons focusing on the history and significance of the Declaration of Independence using resources available through the Library of Congress. The lessons will be evenly distributed across elementary, middle, and high school grade clusters.
University of Virginia
This project empowers teachers to use materials from The Papers of Martin Van Buren to enhance historical inquiry and primary source literacy, while fostering sustainable professional development. Examining Van Buren’s letters, speeches, and notes offers new insights into early U.S. politics and the development of political culture in the 19th century.
Wake Forest University
Our team is designing a series of College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) inquiries using the Inquiry Design Model (IDM), to be implemented at the next Children’s Defense Fund Freedom School hosted by Wake Forest University’s Department of Education. Freedom School is a six-week summer enrichment program in which approximately 45 upper elementary and middle school students from the Winston-Salem community come to campus and engage in a research-based multicultural curriculum. Using our plans, Freedom School students will be able to engage in historical inquiry as a means of building their civic literacy skills. “The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship” primary source collection from the Library of Congress will be the focus of these inquiries. We will also train WFU preservice teachers to implement the inquiries with Freedom School students and in their future teaching practices.
Virginia Social Studies Leaders Consortium
The Virginia Social Studies Leaders Consortium (VSSLC) is a statewide network of curriculum leaders committed to advancing high-quality, inquiry-based history and social science education in Virginia. Since 2003, VSSLC has collaborated with the Virginia Department of Education and other partners to support instructional best practices, professional learning, and standards implementation. Most recently, VSSLC developed a comprehensive Curriculum Guide to support the 2023 History and Social Science Standards. With this project, VSSLC will enter Phase Two: creating high-quality instructional materials aligned to the new standards and featuring Library of Congress resources. These open educational resources will support educators statewide—especially those in under-resourced divisions—by offering model lessons that promote inquiry, primary source analysis, and civic engagement.
Funded by a grant from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program.
Content created and featured in partnership with the TPS program does not indicate an endorsement by the Library of Congress.