Georgia
The History in our Backyard: The Names and Places of Georgia Podcast is headed into their 2nd season as an inquiry project where high school students in Student Leadership North conduct local history research about names of places in Georgia. Students will analyze primary sources using the Library of Congress’ archive and Teaching with Primary Sources strategies to write and record show notes with conversations about why local histories are important to understanding the meaning of place and civic identity. This coming academic year coincides with America250. Our grant team is already working on theming season 2 for students by focusing on episodes that focus on America250 and Georgia’s pre-colonial history, its role as a colony, and its role in the American Revolution and new republic.
The Towns County Historical Society in partnership with the Linguistic Justice Collaborative are committed to preserving the languages, histories, and places of North Georgia's Southern Appalachian region. Extending a multi-year effort of participatory archiving and oral history projects, the team will now place Towns County artifacts in conversation with the larger stories of the Southern Region and American history in the form of walking and driving tours, historical interpretation training for historical society members, and continuing public education efforts in partnership with other Appalachian cultural heritage organizations and sites.
Untying the Knot of Segregation: Engaging Students with Local and National Stories through Primary Sources Combining the national context of the Civil Rights Movement with local stories of school desegregation, the Fulton County Schools Teaching Museum & Archives will broaden the abilities of K-12 educators who teach these complex topics through a new project funded by the Library’s TPS Southern Region Grant Program. The project, Untying the Knot of Segregation: Engaging Students with Local and National Stories through Primary Sources, partners 12 TPS Architects from within the school district with iTeach, an organization from Kennesaw State University specializing in innovative, instructional technology, to produce and implement a series of classroom-ready lesson modules featuring primary sources from the Library of Congress and stories from the local community.
Teaching the Once and Future Middle Ages in the Secondary Education Classroom aims to enhance the teaching of the global medieval world and medievalism in Georgia’s world and U.S. history classrooms by equipping educators with content knowledge and skills in primary source analysis. Over the past two years, Dr. Keohane-Burbridge worked with fifteen academics to create lesson plans with primary sources that complimented and enhanced the Georgia Social Studies Standards of Excellence. Those lesson plans will be published in 2026, but this project allows us to get them into our classrooms more quickly and also to provide insights on future paths for higher education and k-12 collaborations. Additionally, Dr. Keohane-Burbridge will design and lead trainings for fifteen teacher participants with medieval resources held by the Library of Congress.