IDS Instructor Awarded U.S Grant

Over the past year, teachers have had to be incredibly resilient, creative, and resourceful in designing and implementing their lesson plans during the COVID-19 pandemic. While these times are challenging and things have changed, our instructors have remained committed to giving our students as beneficial of an educational experience as possible.  

After months of preparation and planning, IDS Music Instructor Jane Mills, a member of the Connecticut Music Educators Association, worked tirelessly to achieve just that. Earlier this school year, Mills submitted a grant proposal to the Library of Congress and was informed this week that The Connecticut Music Educators Association was awarded a Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) Regional Grant. The Library’s TPS Regional program promotes the widespread, sustained and effective use of primary sources from the Library of Congress by increasing access to the Library and to TPS program resources. 

The grant, called The Virtual Ensemble Project has the support of The National Association for Music Education, and The Hartt, and SUNY Fredonia composition departments. The grant includes creating a website for K-12 teachers to go to to learn how to create virtual ensembles, as well as have music that is copyright free that teachers can use with their students to create virtual ensembles.

Hartt and SUNY Fredonia composition students will create arrangements from the public domain music in the archives of the Library of Congress for K-12 teachers to use with their students in the creation of virtual ensembles. The college students will also dig into the archives to create biographical information about the composition or composer, with links, for teachers to use with their students when teaching the material. The college students will not only be paid by the Library of Congress for their time and effort, but will also receive national recognition, and do something very positive in helping the current challenges concerning teaching music.

The Library of Congress, the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution, is the world’s preeminent reservoir of knowledge, providing unparalleled integrated resources to Congress and the American people. Founded in 1800, the Library seeks to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, which bring to bear the world’s knowledge in almost all of the world’s languages and America’s private sector intellectual and cultural creativity in multiple formats. The TPS Regional program grants awards to organizations and collaborations of organizations that design and deliver projects using Library of Congress materials for specific educational goals in formal or informal settings. Learn more about the Library’s TPS program and other resources available to teachers at www.loc.gov/teachers.