TPS Eastern Region Grant Project Overview

Our grant period began in February 2024 with an all-school Professional Development workshop. As a group, we completed inventories of our local history and community assets to find curricular connections, and learned about benefits and methods of working with primary sources. 

The course ran again from February to April, hosted by the Collaborative for Educational Services, a local educational organization, and was offered for Professional Development and graduate credit from Westfield State University. The group of 6 educators enjoyed a presentation by Allison Russell, who shared information about the Porter Phelps Huntington Museum in Hadley, their collections and educational programs.  Three projects were completed after this second round of work, one about Shays’ Rebellion, one of the most famous historical moments in Western Massachusetts, one on the Cuban Missile Crisis through the local lens, and one building on the town’s version of Monopoly (Daltonopoly) introducing students to places chosen in the game.   

On July 23, we hosted our last event of the grant cycle, an in person course at Mohawk Trail Regional. 16 teachers from across the state met at Mohawk Trail Regional School in Shelburne Falls to learn about local history, primary sources, and how to integrate both into their classrooms. We also had the opportunity to work with Jasmine Goodspeed of the Ohketeau Cultural Center who shared ideas with the participants about how to identify primary documents.