Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking and Master of Arts in Teaching Program Receive Library of Congress Grant Award

ANNANDALE-ON-HUDSON, N.Y. — The Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking (IWT) and Bard College Master of Arts in Teaching Program (MAT) have been awarded their third grant to imbed digitized Library of Congress primary sources into their programming for teachers and students. Bard MAT and IWT are known for their innovative strategies in supporting literacy instruction across disciplines through writing-based, student-centered teaching practices. The latest grant of $48,617, awarded under the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program, supports their collaborative one-year project “Mapping Unknowns: Writing to Read Primary Sources.” 

The Bard MAT/IWT project will make use of the vast archival resources of the Library of Congress in professional development workshops that model how to apply writing-to-read and writing-to-learn strategies to primary sources in ELA, Social Studies, and STEM classrooms. The project will develop a workshop series for teachers, teachers-in-training, and middle school and high school students, focused on an interdisciplinary collection of sources (historical surveys, maps, and representations of the American landscape). The primary goal of the workshops is to offer writing-based strategies to help students delve into texts that might feel daunting and inaccessible and to give them tools to slow down their reading and uncover surprising connections and meaning. 
 
Proposed workshops include one-day events during the school year, programming in the MAT summer semester, and an intensive weeklong workshop that will be offered within IWT’s popular and long-running July Weeklong Workshop series. Some workshops will be held in person on Bard College’s campus in New York’s Hudson Valley; some will be held online.

The thematic focus of the first year of the project will be “Mapping the Natural Landscape.” Utilizing writing-to-read practices that are fundamental to IWT’s philosophy and pedagogy, faculty development workshops will explore the many facets—personal, historical, ecological, political, and socio-economic—that shape the ways that we read and interpret natural landscapes. To inform this work, participants will draw on Library of Congress sources such as maps, photographs, and explorer accounts. Sources might include Army Corps of Engineers maps and surveys of the Mississippi River flood plains, photographs of Native American life on the Great Plains, and photographs of ice farming on the Hudson for example. Workshops will use a variety of writing practices to consider the “expeditionary” techniques that explorers, scientists, artists, and activists have used to investigate the natural world. This work will invite participants to ask: How has ecological change been fueled by historical ideas about the “ordering” of wilderness into the “unknown” and the “known”? How have we inherited and/or internalized these ways of “reading” our natural surroundings? How can socio-political movements shift perspectives on how we value the landscape?

Reading primary sources poses particular literacy challenges for students—whether because of challenging language, unfamiliar visual conventions, or simply because (unlike many texts that students encounter in the classroom) primary sources were not written or produced with twenty-first-century students as their intended audiences. The writing-to-learn and writing-to-read strategies, modeled in the IWT and MAT workshops, help teachers guide students through encounters with challenging texts. When teachers practice these strategies alongside their students and integrate them into the regular rhythms of their classrooms, students make them their own, and overcome the psychological and affective blocks that diminish engagement. Writing-to-learn and writing-to-read strategies are particularly empowering when students use them to navigate and decipher historical and primary sources, helping them to find unexpected layers of meaning and interpret unfamiliar data. 

Bard College IWT/MAT have previously been awarded two TPS Regional grants in 2019 and 2020 for the projects “The World of the Poem: Teaching Poetry through Primary Sources” and “‘If Woman Upset the World’: Reading and Writing Women Activists of the Hudson Valley.” These successful projects operated through the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Regional Grant Program.   
About Bard MAT
The Bard College Master of Arts in Teaching (MAT) offers an intensive, one-year program that integrates courses in education, the candidate’s discipline (biology, history, literature, mathematics, and Spanish), a summer field experience, and two semesters of full-time, mentored student teaching in middle and high schools. From its inception in 2004, Bard MAT has prepared teachers for a wide range of educational settings, with an emphasis on inclusive pedagogy, diverse literacies, and subject-matter expertise. bard.edu/mat
 
About Bard IWT
The Bard College Institute for Writing and Thinking (IWT) is a professional development institute within Bard College. Since its founding in 1982, IWT has offered writing-based teaching workshops to approximately 1100 educators a year, ranging from middle school to the graduate level. Workshops and conferences take place on the Bard College campus, online, and at various institutions in the United States and abroad, attracting teachers from across the United States and around the world. IWT also develops customized professional development workshops for schools and colleges that are tailored to their specific needs, and has partnered in this capacity with hundreds of institutions, both domestic and international. iwt.bard.edu
 
About the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States—and extensive materials from around the world—both on-site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. loc.gov

About Bard College
Founded in 1860, Bard College is a four-year residential college of the liberal arts and sciences located 90 miles north of New York City. With the addition of the Montgomery Place estate, Bard’s campus consists of nearly 1,000 parklike acres in the Hudson River Valley. It offers bachelor of arts, bachelor of science, and bachelor of music degrees, with majors in nearly 40 academic programs; graduate degrees in 11 programs; eight early colleges; and numerous dual-degree programs nationally and internationally. Building on its 161-year history as a competitive and innovative undergraduate institution, Bard College has expanded its mission as a private institution acting in the public interest across the country and around the world to meet broader student needs and increase access to liberal arts education. The undergraduate program at our main campus in upstate New York has a reputation for scholarly excellence, a focus on the arts, and civic engagement. Bard is committed to enriching culture, public life, and democratic discourse by training tomorrow’s thought leaders. For more information about Bard College, visit bard.edu.

This event was last updated on 12-07-2021

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