Oconto teacher selected for National History Day program

Jenny Holmgren, a teacher at Bayshore Community Academy in Oconto, is one of only 98 teachers selected for a National History Day summer professional development program.

The new course focuses on using online Library of Congress resources to develop and support historical arguments and is a feature of National History Day’s membership in the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources consortium, or TPS.

Over the course of the series, Holmgren has explored digitized primary sources from the Library of Congress, engaged in four live webinar programs and discussions with fellow educators from across the country and developed resources to use with students in her classroom.

The National History Day program in Wisconsin selected Holmgren. Program affiliates include all 50 states and the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and international school programs in China, South Asia and South Korea.

As one of the selected teachers, Holmgren receives free tuition, graduate credits and materials for the online program.

“As a TPS Consortium member, we are thrilled to utilize the vast array of digitized primary sources made available online by the Library of Congress,” said National History Day Executive Director Dr. Cathy Gorn. “At the conclusion of this course, Mrs. Holmgren will be able to share with her students key strategies for researching, supporting and presenting historical arguments backed up by these primary sources. This is a crucial skill in teaching and learning good history and is especially valuable now when so many students and teachers across the country are engaged in remote learning due to the coronavirus pandemic.”