Atlanta, Georgia | Saturday, October 18th
Learning from People’s Stories
Join us in this interactive professional development workshop on teaching with folk sources as primary sources. It will feature speakers and content from Local Learning, Vermont Folklife, the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program, New York Folklore, the Veterans History Project, and the Library of Congress.
Registration is required both for teachers and conference attendees. Walk-ins will only be accepted if space is available on that day.
Saturday, October 18, 2025
(with add-on events Friday night and Sunday for GA Teachers interested in potential PLUs Credit Hours*)
Crowne Plaza Atlanta Midtown, 8:30 am-3:00 pm
Cost: $25 for Teachers and Educational Staff, including paraprofessionals
- Pay the $25 Educator Day Rate by registering through the Oral History Association link here: https://oralhistory.org/annual-meeting
- The workshop is free for registered conference attendees of the Oral History Association or American Folklore Society meetings.
- Please note, even if you are registered for either OHA or AFS, we suggest you register for this workshop because seats are limited. Walk-ins will be limited to seats available. You may also not receive the handouts or certificates of participation without registering in advance.
About the Workshop:
Teaching with Primary Sources (TPS) is the Library of Congress’ premier educational program, focused on helping educators enhance students’ critical thinking, analysis skills, and content knowledge using the Library’s collections of millions of digitized primary sources. The Local Learning project team offers teaching tools and materials that engage the digitally available archival holdings of the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress alongside local and regional collections, bringing them into conversation with each other to create a fuller, more complex narrative of American communities, history, and people.
Local Learning is hosting this workshop for K-12 teachers focusing on building and accessing oral history and ethnographic primary sources in the classroom. Over the past four years, Local Learning has worked collaboratively with partners across the nation to use American Folklife Center (AFC) collections of the Library of Congress to engage, inspire, and inform learners of all ages through their significant Teaching with Primary Sources education program.
This day-long event will include concurrent sessions featuring Oral History content from 8:30-10:00, a poster session featuring curriculum and content from the TPS partners/Consortium (which includes members around the U.S.), and plenary sessions with both interactive activities and guest speakers from 10:30 am-3:00 pm. The plenary program will feature speakers from Local Learning, Vermont Folklife, the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program, New York Folklore, the Veterans History Project, and the Library of Congress.
Are you a current or recent TPS grantee who would like to present a poster or serve on a morning panel? Please fill out our registration form and indicate this where asked! We will be in touch with additional information.
Just Announced: Lee Ann Potter will give workshop Keynote Address
Lee Ann Potter
Lee Ann Potter is the Director of Professional Learning and Outreach Initiatives at the Library of Congress, where she has worked since 2013. She leads a talented team committed to informing, inspiring, and engaging the Library’s nationwide connectors—specifically educators, librarians, early researchers, and literacy champions—by developing educational programs and materials largely based on primary sources. She directs the Library’s Teaching with Primary Sources grant program, the Library’s Literacy Awards program, and the Affiliated Centers for the Book. Before coming to the Library, she created and directed education and volunteer programs at the National Archives and Records Administration for 16 years. Prior to that, she worked at the Smithsonian on a project to build museum-school partnerships, and before that, was a high school social studies teacher. During the 2009-10 school year, she served as a Fulbright Roving Scholar of American Studies in Norway. She has conducted hundreds of presentations and has written more than one hundred articles promoting teaching with primary sources and information literacy.
Featured Guest Speakers
Dr. Stevie Johnson, aka Dr. View is the Assistant Professor of Creative Practice in Popular Music at The Ohio State University. DJ, producer, educator and community organizer, Dr. View is the sonic spirit of Black Wall Street embodied. The Tulsa-based producer and DJ is a southern, soulful, sampled-based beat maker and songwriter who utilizes sound to educate and liberate community through music and stories. Dr. View received his PhD in Higher Education Administration from the University of Oklahoma in 2019. His dissertation, entitled Curriculum of the Mind: A BlackCrit, Narrative Inquiry Hip Hop Album on Anti-Blackness and Freedom for Black Male Collegians at historically white institutions, received the 2019 Bobby Wright Dissertation of the Year Award for the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE). This was the first time a hip hop dissertation or non-traditional dissertation ever received the award. Dr. View is the founder and executive producer of Fire in Little Africa, a multimedia hip hop project that consisted of four components: a 21-track hip hop album which was signed to Motown Records, an award-winning documentary, podcast and curriculum inspired by Black Wall Street, and the 100-year acknowledgment of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. The project, featuring 60 artists from the state of Oklahoma, was released in May 2021 and accumulated over 7 million streams across all digital streaming platforms. In addition, Dr. View is the 2023 Nasir Jones Hip Hop Fellow at Harvard University, which is named after iconic hip hop legend and artist, Nas.
Hayden Haynes is an antler carving artist working deeply in cultural arts revitalization and teaching. A member of the Seneca Nation and Deer Clan, Hayden is a self-taught artist. His current art practice involves working across the mediums of antler, found objects, mixed media, and digital photography. Born in Claremore, OK, Hayden grew up on the Seneca-Cattaraugus Territory in Western New York. It is from here where he draws inspiration related to land, history, and culture for his artwork, which gives his pieces strong personal and emotional components. Whether his art touches on the Native experience, identity, or resiliency, Hayden’s work is always created through a self-perspective framed Native lens sharing his experiences, knowledge, and observations of living among his community. He has been supported through acquisitions, exhibitions, and grants by various institutions, including Cornell University, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Brooklyn Museum, New-York Historical Society Museum & Library, New York Folklore Society, The Center for Craft, and the New York State Council on the Arts, among others.
In addition to his life as an artist he serves his Seneca community as the director of the Seneca Nation Onöhsagwë: de’ Cultural Center (SNOCC), which houses the Seneca Nation of Indians’ Seneca-Iroquois National Museum (SINM), and Archives. Hayden is dedicated to amplifying the voices of the Senecas, enhancing cultural revitalization with lasting impacts for the future, and serving his people. His number one aim is to build community in all that he does. Hayden currently lives and works in Seneca-Allegany Territory.
Workshop Faculty and Facilitators:
Local Learning is a National Arts Service Organization that will bring their national faculty and local experts together to support this training opportunity.
Dr. Lisa Rathje is Executive Director of Local Learning. She directs teacher and artist training institutes and advocates for the inclusion of culture in diverse learning spaces. She consults nationally, including currently a 5-year consultancy for the REACH program of the University of South Florida funded by the U.S. Department of Education to strengthen arts and culture programming in the nation’s educational system. With Paddy Bowman, she is co-editor and founder of the Journal of Folklore and Education, an international, freely accessed, multimedia juried journal.
Library of Congress, American Folklife Center documents and shares the many expressions of human experience to inspire, revitalize, and perpetuate living cultural traditions. Designated by the U.S. Congress as the national center for folklife documentation and research, the Center meets its mission by stewarding archival collections, creating public programs, and exchanging knowledge and expertise.
Monica Mohindra is Director of the Veterans History Project. Since 2010, Monica has served as Head of VHP’s Program Coordination & Communication section and has helped shape collaborations with many other organizations, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Vietnam War Commemoration, the Military Women’s Memorial, U.S. House of Representatives Wounded Warrior Fellowship Program, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the National Endowment for the Humanities, PBS/WETA, Ken Burns/Florentine Films, Craft in America, and the Oral History Association.
Dr. Guha Shankar is Folklife Specialist in the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, and a Fellow of the American Folklore Society. He is the Library’s liaison to Local Learning’s TPS consortium in which role he conducts research to locate and provide access to AFC and Library collections for curriculum development by consortium partners. He is the current co-Chair of OHA’s Task Force on Ethics and the Law, serves as project coordinator of Ancestral Voices – a collaborative curatorial initiative with indigenous communities, and co-directs the national Civil Rights History Project (in collaboration with NMAAHC) at the Library. Dr. Shankar also provides skills-based training in field research methods and archival preservation, including project planning, interviewing, photography, and archival best practices. He has extensive experience in media production, publishes in a range of traditional and digital media outlets, delivers public lectures and conducts technical workshops for a variety of audiences.
New York Folklore collaborates with communities in New York to identify and to understand the artistic and cultural needs of diverse populations in the state. Working collaboratively with communities, New York Folklore strives to bring regenerative practices to bear to support the maintenance, cultivation, and nurturing of the diverse cultural heritages found in New York State.
Dr. Ellen McHale has served as the CEO of New York Folklore, since 1999. Her role includes being the managing editor of “Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore,” working with the New York Folklore Board of Directors, communicating with funders and potential donors and funders, and serving as spokesperson for the organization. At New York Folklore, she oversees a statewide network of folk cultural specialists, community experts, and artists. Partnering with Local Learning, New York Folklore maintains and supports a growing network of teaching folk artists.
Oklahoma Oral History Research Program is a research division of the Oklahoma State University Library with the focus of broadening archival inclusion of individual or communal memory and experiences representing Oklahoma and OSU history and culture through ethical oral history practice.
Sarah Milligan is a Professor and Head of the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program (OOHRP) at the Oklahoma State University Library, where she holds the Hyle Family Endowed Professorship and oversees the production, access, and preservation of the 2,000+ interviews in the OOHRP collection. She has worked extensively in oral history outreach, including providing training for new interview production as well as technical assistance to oral history collection holders throughout the country. Milligan has expertise in archival preservation and access and is a founding member of the Digital Public Library of America OKHub working group, and the inaugural President for the Oklahoma Archivists Association. She was elected to First Vice President of the Oral History Association in 2023.
Dr. Autumn Brown earned her Ph.D. in Social Foundations of Education from Oklahoma State University where she is an Assistant Professor in the Edmon Low Library with the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program. Her dissertation was an educational biography of teacher activist Clara Luper (1923-2011) and Luper’s work with Oklahoma City’s NAACP Youth Council leading one of our nation’s first sit-in movements.
Vermont Folklife is a nationally-known education and cultural research nonprofit that uses ethnography—the study of cultural experience through interviewing, participation and observation—to strengthen the understanding of the cultural and social fabric of Vermont’s diverse communities.
Mary Wesley is Director of Education and Media. She has a background in Anthropology and completed post-graduate training at the SALT Institute for Documentary Studies in audio production and multimedia storytelling. She supports Vermont Folklife’s public learning opportunities centered around ethnographic learning and media production and also helps coordinate the Vermont Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program. Mary is also the founding producer and host of VT Untapped, VT Folklife’s own podcast that explores the state through the voices of its own residents.
Dr. Andy Kolovos is Associate Director and Archivist. He earned a BA in Literature from Bennington College, and holds a Ph.D. in Folklore and Ethnomusicology and an MLS, both from Indiana University. His professional interests include graphic ethnography/ethnographic cartooning, audio field recording, audio preservation, and theory and practice in folklore and folklife archives. He is co-coordinator of the National Folklore Archives Initiative project of the American Folklore Society.
Content created and featured in partnership with the TPS program does not indicate an endorsement by the Library of Congress.
* Local Learning does not offer PLUs for certificate renewal with the Georgia Professional Standards Commission. According to GaPSC rule 505-2-.36, the Georgia Professional Standards Commission (GaPSC) only accepts PLUs from conference attendance under certain guidelines. What might be of benefit to you is having a certificate of attendance, which Local Learning is willing to provide after your attendance is verified and if you indicate that you will be requesting this certificate in their registration. The responsibility for determining credit eligibility is with the teacher. Those who need to accumulate 10 hours of PD for credit may opt in through their registration to add on a lecture by Dr. Bettina Love on Friday night and to complete a written component (based upon PL Goals) that will be submitted to Local Learning.