To start the school year on the right foot, we are excited to announce new changes to the Education portal on HSP’s website.  This summer, as an Education intern, I was tasked with creating a new look for the Education section of the website.  To create a new template for the website, we worked with our Teacher Advisory Board as they used their own experience and knowledge of what resources were most useful to them. If you have been exploring the Education page over the summer, you may have even noticed some of these changes slowly going into effect.   

With the new changes, there are three main pathways under the new Education page; “For Teachers,” “For Students,” and “National History Day.” For Teachers, we have gathered all of our helpful classroom resources into one webpage called Educational Resources.  Here you can find Unit Plans, Primary Sources, links to our Digital History projects, Topical Resource Guides, and information on resources outside of our website. 

Want to book a trip or visit?  The Field Trips & Outreach section has a list of ideas for field trip or outreach visit topics, our policies and procedures for visiting, and links to forms through which you can submit a request for a trip or visit.  On the updated Professional Development page, you will find upcoming teacher workshops, information on the Teacher Advisory Board, helpful History Education links, and resources from past professional development programs.

The student section has the most changes to make it easier for them to use our research tools online and at HSP’s library.  Look at the Researching the Collection Online for Students page for details on how to use Discover (our online catalog), the Digital Library, as well as our Finding Aids and Subject Guides to begin research.  Ready to visit the library?  Check out Tips for Doing Research at HSP  assists students in knowing how to visit and use the library for research.  If stduents need some help once they arrive, we will have Student Mentors available after-school on Tuesdays through Thurdays, or students may fill out a “Student Research Request” forms to let us know when they are coming and what they are researching.

Finally,  our National History Day section explores topics from our collections that can be used with this year’s theme. HSP is excited to host the NHD kick-off for the fourth year in a row.

If you have not explored the new Education webpage yet, take a look now.  Please let us know if you have any comments or questions as we are always working to make this as user-friendly as possible.  Happy teaching!