Controversy is a Good Thing

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.” 

Frederick Douglas    

Project Focus

The Controversy is a Good Thing project is designed to support educators and paraprofessionals across Kansas who facilitate the learning of non-traditional students in high school degree completion programs. Project programming integrates Library of Congress digital resources and inclusive literature to support student conversations around complex and complicated topics.

 
Project Lead Partner

ESSDACK is a regional education service agency located in Hutchinson, Kansas, delivering professional development, educational coaching, leadership training, and technology management to 61 member school districts and numerous non-member districts across Kansas and the United States. 

Current and past grant partnerships include the Kansas State Historical Society, the Kansas Council for History Education, the Minnesota Council for the Social Studies, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and post-secondary institutions such as the University of Kansas, Washburn University, and Johnson County Community College.

 
Project Partners

Together with the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources, ESSDACK is partnering with the Kansas African American Museum, the Mid-America All Indian Center, Smoky Hills ESA, Orion ESA, Greenbush ESA, and Maize Schools. 

Project Consortium

Since 2006, the Library of Congress has awarded Teaching with Primary Sources grants to build a nationwide network of organizations that deliver educational programming, and create teaching materials and tools based on the Library’s digitized primary sources and other online resources. 

Consortium members target a variety of learner populations allowing the Library to better reach its mission to engage, inspire, and inform by engaging communities across the country with TPS methods and materials.