Teaching With Primary Sources
About TPS
MHC Teaching with Primary Sources Program
The Mars Hill College TPS program grew from a pilot project, An Adventure of the American Mind.
In 1999, Congressman Charles Taylor of the 11th Congressional District in western North Carolina obtained funding to start a local project to bring the resources of the Library of Congress (LOC) to K12 classrooms in Western North Carolina. The Adventure of the American Mind (AAM) project would conduct professional development for teachers through local colleges (Mars Hill College, Brevard College, Montreat College, Western Carolina University, and Furman University) to use digital primary sources in the classroom. Participating K12 teachers and librarians prepared learning activities using primary resources.
Through the efforts of far-sighted senators and congressmen, AAM continued to change and grow as it developed new programs throughout the United States, becoming a pioneer in helping teachers to integrate digital resources into the classroom, reaching more than 10,000 teachers and school librarians.
Building on the success of AAM program and its own American Memory Fellows program, in 2006 the Library of Congress created 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’s vast collection of digitized primary sources to enrich their classroom instruction.
In 2008, the Library extended an invitation to Mars Hill to join the TPS consortium, so that we may continue to serve the educators of Western North Carolina.
Professional development opportunities provided under the Teaching with Primary Sources program include workshops, seminars, graduate courses, distance learning courses, and mentoring to teachers of all disciplines. To learn more, visit the Library’s TPS presence on the web at www.loc.gov/teachers/tps/.