George Washington Teacher Institute & Remote Learning

For more than 20 years, the George Washington Teacher Institute has provided teachers the resources and materials they need to educate their students about George Washington’s legacy, the founding era, and the nation’s struggles with slavery. In most years, teachers from around the country attend week-long immersive sessions at Mount Vernon, interacting with its staff and collections. The Covid-19 pandemic required Mount Vernon to adapt to remote learning opportunities. While we were disappointed not to have teachers visit in person, the result was programming attended by a much wider audience of educators.

Each program offered in 2020 was rooted in the successful foundations of our George Washington Teacher Institute on-site programs (deep content, practical classroom application, and immersive historical experiences). Content-rich lectures were enhanced with robust Q&A sessions in video conferencing chats. Primary sources, normally paired with direct access to the Mount Vernon estate, were paired with guided virtual tours. Mount Vernon’s K-12 education team created a variety of digital programs to help teachers find resources and increase their own content knowledge of the 18th-century world of George Washington. Seven program series were hosted between March and December, ranging from monthly hour-long happy hours, to an in-depth three-day symposium focused on Slavery in George Washington’s World, to multiweek lecture series with leading scholars. Each of these programs allowed our staff to bring content, compassion, and resources directly to more than 900 educators from 47 states, as well as Puerto Rico and Washington, DC. 

We heard from teachers that they also needed classroom resources to directly engage their students with our content and experts. Existing online educational resources developed over the last five years, like Be Washington and the virtual tour of the estate, were highlighted on a new Online Learning web page built for educators and on an Online Activities for Kids web page for families. We also launched a weekly livestream to explore teaching with Mount Vernon resources that aired on Mount Vernon’s social media channels as “Teaching Tuesdays” from March through June and reached more than 110,000 viewers. 

In addition, we pivoted our on-site tours to directly support student learning on virtual field trips. More than 100 distance learning programs brought Mount Vernon into the homes and classrooms of more than 2,700 students across the country. They explored George Washington’s life, leadership, and complex legacies using the virtual tour and rich primary sources with top-notch student-focused facilitation. Teachers could trust Mount Vernon with their valued in-person virtual class time. 

To sponsor a teacher, contact the Development Department at 703.799.8647.

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