NCTE, in partnership with the Library of Congress, invites high school teachers to apply for a fellowship in the New Perspectives on Primary Sources (NPPS) Project. Fellowships offer approximately 60 hours of professional learning alongside the opportunity to contribute to an instructional unit and chapter for an NCTE edited book. As conditions for travel might allow, participants will be given complimentary registration for the 2022 NCTE Annual Convention in November. Stipends of $2,000 will be offered. Applicants must be current educators teaching in classrooms. English, literature, writing, speech communication, media studies, school librarians, and journalism teachers are all invited.
More about the project and fellowships:
As a core component of high school English, NCTE members both deeply value and explicitly teach their students to analyze and interpret a variety of texts: novels, dramas, and poems; media such as websites, film, and photographs; non-fiction texts including biographies and technical reports. As argued in NCTE’s “Definition of Literacy in a Digital Age,” “[t]he world demands that a literate person possess and intentionally apply a wide range of skills, competencies, and dispositions,” including our students’ abilities to find and interpret primary sources. Moreover, with a shift towards disciplinary, digital, and critical literacies, we find that historical documents and artifacts — as well as images, social media posts, and videos created with contemporary technologies — all serve as primary sources, worthy of interrogation.
In partnership with the Library of Congress’s Teaching with Primary Sources Program, NCTE offers 15 fellowships high school (Grades 9-12) English language arts educators the opportunity to investigate the past, present, and future of primary source evaluation, all while connecting disciplinary, digital, and critical literacies. Teachers who apply for and are accepted to the program will engage in a year-long professional development program that will invite them into the kinds of reading, writing, and research practices that we would, in turn, expect them to enact in their own classrooms.
This professional learning experience will take place entirely online during after school hours, through Zoom video conferencing, throughout the second half of the 2021-22 academic year and stretching into fall 2022. In addition to the countless number of digitized artifacts available through the Library of Congress website, we will invite teachers to examine artifacts through virtual visits to selected cultural institutions and with LOC/TPS partners. Educators selected to participate in NPPS will have the opportunity to earn a $2,000 stipend after the conclusion of their participation in approximately 60 hours of professional learning and the development of an instructional unit and chapter for an NCTE edited book.
To earn the project stipend, teachers will:
- Meet consistently for a 90-minute workshop session with NPPS facilitators, examining the use of primary sources in the high school English classroom. Dates/times for the workshops TBD.
- Engage in additional, regular virtual visits with LOC/TPS partners in either real time or by viewing recordings.
- Contribute lesson plans, vignettes, or other materials to an NCTE edited book that provides instructional guidance on Teaching with Primary Sources in secondary ELA-oriented classrooms, with particular inclusion of digital writing and critical media literacy.
Additional opportunities for professional learning and travel include:
- As conditions for travel might allow, participants will be given complimentary registration for the 2022 NCTE Annual Convention in November and, if funds allow, an additional honorarium for travel expenses.
Find the application below. The deadline to apply is Wednesday, December 1.
The application period is now closed. An email will be sent soon with more information to applicants.
Questions? Email us!
NCTE is engaged with ongoing work with the Library of Congress as part of the Teaching with Primary Sources Consortium to expand the use of primary sources in teaching. Find more resources at the Teacher’s Page.