Colorado Spring District 11
Contact: Alisa Schleder
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://www.d11.org/
Grant Awarded: 9/11/24
Colorado Springs School District 11, in partnership with J. Martin Education Consulting, aims to enhance Social Studies instruction for 6th-12th grade educators through a year-long professional development initiative. The project focuses on Text-First Planning (TFP), which aligns instructional practices with their Districts ELA colleagues who recently integrated TFP into their curriculum.
The program will provide four in-person PD sessions, coaching, and observation cycles utilizing resources from the Library of Congress. The project seeks to build teacher capacity in planning from texts and improving student engagement. Expected outcomes include improved student engagement and better alignment of instructional practices across their District.
University of Colorado Colorado Springs Geography and Earth Science
Contact: Dr. Irina Kopteva and Dr. Rebecca Theobald
Email: [email protected] and [email protected]
Website: https://ges.uccs.edu/
Grant Awarded: 9/18/24
The University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) will develop and deliver an online graduate course titled Teaching Earth and Environmental Science with Primary Sources. This initiative builds on previous professional development workshops conducted in partnership with the Douglas County School District and funded by a Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Western Region grant.
The project aims to expand the reach of its professional development efforts to all 179 school districts in Colorado This course will offer middle and high school science teachers and librarians strategies to incorporate Library of Congress primary sources into Earth and environmental science curricula. Professional development units, and graduate credits will be available for those who complete the course.
The course, delivered online via UCCS’s Canvas platform, will feature synchronous and asynchronous modules that integrate primary source analysis, pedagogical strategies, and inquiry-based learning.
The first cohort, expected to launch in spring 2025, will engage 20-25 educators from across the state. The course will be evaluated through participant projects and feedback, with plans to continue offering the course annually as part of UCCS’s regular curriculum. Dissemination efforts will include conference presentations and scholarly publications.
Montrose County School District
Contact: Lori Roberts
Email: [email protected]Website: https://www.mcsd.org/
Grant Awarded: 9/30/24
Montrose County School District (MCSD), in collaboration with the Montrose Regional Library District, aims to provide professional development to 30 teachers and library managers in the Western Slope area of Colorado. The project will introduce primary sources into K-8 instruction using children’s literature and graphic novels. This initiative addresses a gap in primary source education, enhancing inquiry and critical thinking by equipping educators to utilize Library of Congress resources.
Teachers and librarians will learn how to integrate primary sources with literary texts like City of Gold and Nathan Hale’s Hazardous Tales series. The group will also combine these texts with primary source materials to create classroom-ready lessons that foster student engagement with U.S. history.
By empowering educators with skills to access and incorporate primary sources, this program will enhance historical literacy, benefiting 4th–8th grade students and beyond. Expected outcomes include a toolkit of resources and strengthened partnerships between schools and public libraries, ensuring sustainable integration of primary sources in the region’s education system.
Educurious Partners
Contact: Chris Carter
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://educurious.org
Grant Awarded: 6-7-24
This project aims to complete the AAPI cultural series of education materials started with their ethnic studies grant with the Library of Congress. This project will focus on the histories and contributions of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities using primary source materials from the Library of Congress collections. By recruiting and training 20 high school teachers from the western U.S., they aim to impact at least 2,600 students, equipping them with the historical thinking skills necessary for informed democratic participation. Their approach will be grounded in learning science and project-based learning which will emphasize authentic engagement with primary sources, fostering a richer understanding of history and contemporary issues among students. Materials created will be vetted and then added to their ethnic studies collection of learning modules on their open educational resources site here: https://educurious.org/oer-curriculum/
Colorado State University
Contact: Jessica Jackson
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://www.chhs.colostate.edu/soe
Grant Awarded: 2/2/24
The History Matters: Poudre School District (PSD) Pilot Project aims to create an culturally responsive Colorado history curriculum. Focusing on Larimer County’s K-12 classrooms, the project involves building a collaborative, place-based curriculum, including an open-access Colorado history textbook. The initiative addresses challenges in current social studies education, aiming to provide accurate, diverse, and culturally sensitive curriculum aligned with state standards. The PSD Pilot Project will develop annotated lesson plans and resource sets through workshops and community oral history collection events called History Harvests, incorporating both Library of Congress sources and local materials. The project’s goals include empowering BIPOC and Native students, connecting primary sources to create inclusive K-12 social studies curriculum, and fostering partnerships with communities, institutions, and educators. The expected outcomes include, annotated lesson plans, resource sets, and recommendations for further curriculum development and implementation. The project emphasizes sustainability, with plans for dissemination through conferences, pre-service teacher involvement, and integration into CSU coursework.
Adams 12 Five Star Schools
Contact: Cassie Moore
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://www.adams12.org/
Grant awarded 7/16/2021
The Adams 12 school district will train a cohort of teachers to align their district curriculum to the state mandated Colorado House Bill on the Inclusion of American Minorities. They will partner with History Colorado to include local primary sources to complement those at the Library of Congress. They are also partnering with St. Vrain Valley School in Colorado in building these resources. The outcome will be to build content knowledge in their districts teachers and also create aligned primary sources sets for each grade to be embedded district wide.
National History Day in Colorado
Contact: Celeste Archer
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://clas.ucdenver.edu/nhdc/
Grant awarded 3/31/22
NHDC is the Colorado State partner for NHD. They are housed at the University of Colorado – Denver.
Their grant will extend the reach of NHDC existing professional development offerings to underserved, rural and low socio-economic status communities in Colorado to bring the benefits of the Library of Congress and NHD to students who need it most.
They will hold a series of educator workshops, both online and in-person, to culminate with an educator showcase, at which participants will receive an NHDC Master Teacher designation. They plan to reach over 100 teachers through these workshops.
Participants who complete the Master Teacher training will then be eligible to enroll in a UC Denver graduate course taught by NHDC staff to continue their professional development.
This project will also provide stipends, scholarships, resources, and training to facilitate the implementation of the NHD program by the participants. A portion of this grant will also allow NHDC to provide scholarships to students to enroll in the concurrent history courses.
Sand Creek Massacre Foundation
Contact: Alexa Roberts
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://www.sandcreekmassacrefoundation.org/
Grant awarded 6/2/23
The “Teaching the Sand Creek Massacre ” project by the Sand Creek Massacre Foundation aims to address the lack of educational resources about the unprovoked US Army attack on Cheyenne and Arapaho village in southeastern Colorado on November 29, 1864 killing over 230 people.
Collaborating with History Colorado and the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site, the project involves creating tribally-vetted, standards-aligned curricular materials called Inquiry Kits. These kits will cover various themes related to the Sand Creek Massacre, filling an educational void.
The project emphasizes tribal consultation, leverages the Foundation’s connection to the national historic site, and contributes to the development of the Center for Sand Creek Massacre Studies.
Professional development workshops will include educators, tribal scholars, and descendants in crafting primary source-based materials. These workshops will be held in Denver at the History Colorado Center and at the Massacre site near Eads. Colorado.
The project plans to complete 6-8 Inquiry Kits, which will be disseminated through virtual platforms, professional development events, and partner organizations, ensuring long-term sustainability.
Cherry Creek School District
Contact: Steven Kidd
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://www.cde.state.co.us/cosocialstudies
Grant awarded 8/8/23
In November 2022, the Colorado State Board of Education approved revised social studies standards that mandate the teaching of history, culture, and social contributions of minorities, including American Indians, Latinos, African Americans, Asian Americans, LGBTQ+ individuals within these minority groups, and religious minorities.
Recognizing the need for professional development about LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Colorado Social Studies Standards, the Cherry Creek School District (which is located in the Denver Metro area) in partnership with the Colorado Dept. of Education created this project to provide professional development for educators to address these mandates.
The project’s goals include supporting educators in implementing the revised standards by creating curriculum utilizing resources from the Library of Congress. The project will also help educators understand the significance of LGBTQ+ inclusion in education, and provide a space to share resources. They also plan to provide strategies to help educators meet challenges of implementing LGBTQ+ curriculum in the classroom.
The target audience will be Colorado educators, curriculum specialists, and administrators across various grade levels, emphasizing history and civics. The project aims to engage 75-125 educators and enhance LGBTQ+ inclusive curriculum statewide.
University of Colorado Colorado Springs
Contact: Irina Kopteva – Assistant Professor, Research
Email: [email protected]
Website: https://www.uccs.edu/
Grant awarded November 12, 2020
The University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) will partner with the Douglas County School District to develop a curriculum for remote teaching of Earth and Environmental Science with primary sources. Two online workshops will be offered to provide professional development and re-licensure opportunity for science teachers. Workshop participants will learn how to build an engaging online learning community and how to facilitate teamwork for maintaining productive social connections remotely. Each participant will design an activity for teaching earth and environmental science with primary sources in their classroom. The activities will be designed in formats suitable for both face-to-face and online instruction to advance remote learning during the times of an epidemic like COVID-19.
Latino History Project
Contact: Marjorie McIntosh and Kent Willman – Project Directors
Email: [email protected], [email protected]
Website: https://latinohistoryproject.org/
Grant awarded June 13, 2019
The Latino History Project, based at the University of Colorado, was founded in 2013 to help correct the limited presence of local Latino history and culture in most schools and history books. Through their regional grant, the Latino History Project will introduce teachers to the vast resources of the Library of Congress and a more inclusive range of materials to support content/curriculum. Together with local partners, this project will host four workshops across Colorado in communities with high Latino populations. Workshop leaders will use resources from the Library of Congress and other local collections to help teachers create curriculum which tell the stories of the Latino community over time. The overriding goal of the project is to increase Latino student knowledge about their own heritage and to develop a sense of pride and positive identity.