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Teaching with Primary Sources

Mississippi

  • Jackson State University

    Teaching with Primary Sources: Cross-Curricular STEM Integration (2025)

    This project, awarded to Jackson State University, provided quality professional development to support teaching and learning, emphasizing cross-curricular embedded resources and strategies. The Canton Public School District and the Two Mississippi Museums were key project partners supporting the belief that early exposure and engagement with primary sources are important across all core disciplines and are essential to building information and digital literacy skills to increase student engagement and the development of self-accountability for learning.  The Two Mississippi Museums provided access to primary sources that reflected the historical evolution of Mississippi's STEM history exemplified in the economic, geographical, and industrial evolution, particularly in agriculture, telecommunications, and other industries. Leveraging the resources of the Two Mississippi Museums, teachers infused primary artifacts in the construction of lesson plans across core disciplines to facilitate student inquiry and critical thinking.

    Teaching with Primary Sources: Student-Centered Learning (2021)

    Geared toward district librarians and teachers, this project awarded to Jackson State University provided pedagogically relevant professional development that encouraged the use of primary sources in the teaching and learning process. Workshops incorporated a hybrid model of virtual and face-to-face interaction. JSU partnered with three school districts, thereby expanding opportunities for collaboration with districts that engaged 12th-grade students to utilize library sources and cultivate an interest in postsecondary education.

    Contact: Locord Wilson

  • Mississippi State University

    Teaching with Primary Sources Teacher Development (2022) 

    Teaching with Primary Sources Mississippi (TPSM) continues to support education throughout the state with a two-pronged plan. First, developing and offering a new cross-listed graduate course focused on teaching with primary sources for elementary and secondary educators. Second, developing three 10-hour online professional learning courses for social studies and English Language Arts (ELA) educators. Each course focuses on a particular aspect of teaching with primary sources: introduction to the Library of Congress and the myriad of resources available including the TPS Teachers Network, pedagogy for teaching with visual primary sources; and pedagogy for teaching with other types of primary sources with a focus on text-based sources.

    Contact: Nicole Miller

    Teaching Primary Sources Mississippi (2013)

    In this project by Mississippi State University, pre-service and in-service teachers were brought together to improve their ability to teach students to think historically using primary sources from the Library of Congress. This project emphasized the importance of informational text in the curriculum and meeting the Common Core State Standards goals. The project resulted in significant changes to the course design of undergraduate and graduate social studies methods courses.

    Contacts: Kenneth Anthony and Nicole Miller

  • Mississippi Department of Archives & History

    Expanding Mississippi History Day: Providing Equity and Access for Mississippi Teachers and Students

    This project, awarded to the Mississippi Department of Archives & History (MDAH), sought to remove barriers to quality student research by increasing the equity and access to high-quality resources and programs provided by the Library of Congress, Teaching with Primary Sources, National History Day (NHD), and the MDAH. The two-day professional development workshop centered on research guides created by the Library and NHD, along with the intent to remove financial barriers to competing in the NHD state and national contests. Participants were also introduced to Freedom Schools and learned research skills firsthand from new research resources developed by the Library and NHD.

    Contact: Alan Wheat

  • University of Mississippi

    Science Teaching with Embedded Primary Sources (STEPS)

    The aim of the STEPS project by the University of Mississippi was to serve K–12 science teachers by providing workshops where they learned how to find, evaluated, and incorporated primary source materials in their science instruction, and then developed lesson plans and modules based on state science standards.

    Contact: Julie James

  • McComb School District

    Library of Congress Regional Grant Dealing with Primary Sources: Importance of Writing in the New World of Social Studies and Common Core

    This project, awarded to McComb School District, trained teachers from thirteen different school districts across the southwest part of Mississippi. These educators were part of a Teaching American History grant and had had knowledge of the Understanding By Design teaching strategy. They used resources from the Library of Congress and the DBQ Project to gain a deeper understanding of activities shown and created during a three-day workshop.

    Contact: Whit Grace