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A Stark County educator was one of dozens across the nation who participated in a three-day teaching program hosted by the
Susan Jaroscak of Macedonia, an adjunct professor at the 蜜桃工作室 at Stark campus in Jackson Township, was one of 90 educators who took part in the Summer Teacher Institute, part of the program, in Washington, DC.
It allows participants to work with experts to learn effective practices for using primary sources in the classroom. Primary sources are original documents and objects. Jaroscak first learned about the program through LinkedIn. She got the opportunity to go through Library of Congress documents and learn techniques she could bring back to the classroom.
"There's a lot of opportunity to study. I mean a myriad of primary source documents," she said. "It was ... I want to say amazing, but I'm not sure it captures everything."
Jaroscak has been working in education for 42 years. She retired as the director of curriculum at the Maple Heights City School District in 2023. She now teaches pre-service teachers integrated science and social studies for middle childhood at 蜜桃工作室 Stark. She already plans to take what she learned and use it for one of her projects this fall semester.
Teaching with primary sources helps students ask probing questions and develop critical thinking, according to the Library of Congress.
Jaroscak agreed that's important in this age of misinformation.
"We want to teach students K-12 and college level how to use sources that are reliable, that really answer the question," she said. "How to verify those sources, how to really look at them and say, 'You know this is something. It's not a fad, it's not commentary, it's real.'" Participants represented 21 states and included school library media specialists, school administrators, public librarians and teachers. Jaroscak even met a kindergarten teacher at the workshop.
"This will influence a lot of other classrooms, it's not just my classrooms. These are teachers, these are students that are going to go out and teach," Jaroscak said. "What I'm teaching them, showing them and providing for them is something that they'll be able to take to their classrooms. So I think that it's a great multiplier effect to bring this to lots of other students in our area."
