Academy of the Sacred Heart partnered with Xavier University of Louisiana to collaborate on Elevating Voices and Building Community through Primary Sources and Our Shared History.

The project aims to bring a greater awareness to the importance and value of primary sources as well as provide resources and tools to incorporate primary sources into the classroom for any subject and for any grade level.  Library of Congress primary sources will be paired with local primary sources from the Xavier University Archives to show how stories can be told differently, to demonstrate varying points of view, and to allow students and educators to contextualize sources and evaluate for bias, encouraging critical thought.

Through intergenerational sessions, elementary third grade students from Sacred Heart collaborated with college students from Xavier University’s Women in International Contexts course to develop and test curriculum that brought history to life through the incorporation and contextualization of primary sources. By implementing and sharing different primary source analysis strategies, reached students with different learning styles and backgrounds.  Students shared primary sources and analysis strategies focused on women in sports.

As a result of these conversations and collaborations, Sacred Heart and Xavier University are building a Teaching with Primary Sources Toolkit that will include primary sources from both the Library of Congress and the Xavier University Archives as well as analysis strategies and tools developed through the collaboration. The Toolkit will be shared “bookmobile style” with other schools and educators through presentations to educators in New Orleans and at the Louisiana Library Association conference.