The National WWII Museum Announces Summer Teacher Institute

PRESS RELEASE – The National WWII Museum today announced a multi-year WWII Summer Teacher Institute that features an immersive professional development program for high school history and social studies teachers. The program is a momentous step forward in how the Museum interacts with educators, ensuring that teachers nationwide have the content knowledge, instructional techniques, and creative and engaging curriculum materials needed to teach WWII history. Central to the program is a four-volume curriculum guide drawn from the immense resources of the Museum’s physical and digital collections, designed to be used as the definitive WWII educational resource in classrooms across the country. Kicking off in the summer of 2016, the Institute takes place over the course of two years through a combination of on-site education at the Museum, destination travel to key WWII locations, and interactive training and support throughout the year.

The program is open to any high school social studies or history teacher at an accredited public, charter, private or parochial school who has at least two years experience and will be teaching during the 2016-2017 school year. Media specialists, librarians, curriculum coordinators and academic coaches are eligible as long as they spend at least half of their time providing direct instruction to students.Applications will be evaluated through a competitive process that will include information on teaching experience, three short written statements and two letters of recommendation. For the inaugural class, the Museum will select a cohort of 28 teachers to spend a week at the Museum in New Orleans in July 2016 and a week abroad in July 2017. Participants will also gain broad access to digital collections and online media as they provide students with assets from the Museum’s unique collection of artifacts, exhibit content, oral histories and archival materials.“The Museum is a vital WWII educational resource for teachers and students throughout the United States,” said Museum Director of Education Kenneth Hoffman. “The institution’s four-volume curriculum series will provide a framework for the Institute, as well as lesson plans and primary source material for teachers to bring back to their classrooms. This program will train 140 WWII teachers of grades 7-12 over five years, and they will in turn train more teachers, creating an infrastructure to educate an unlimited amount of students with our curriculum – 400,000 students in the first five years alone.”

 Provided free of charge to participating teachers, educators completing the two-year program will earn six hours of graduate credit. The Museum will develop ways to foster continuing engagement with expert teachers in the years following their program by inviting them to attend and present at the Museum’s annual International Conference on World War II and to serve as advisors to new program participants.

 To apply, visit http://www.nationalww2museum.org/institute.

 The National WWII Museum tells the story of the American experience in the war that changed the world – why it was fought, how it was won, and what it means today – so that future generations will know the price of freedom, and be inspired by what they learn. Dedicated in 2000 as The National D-Day Museum and now designated by Congress as America’s National WWII Museum, it celebrates the American Spirit, the teamwork, optimism, courage and sacrifices of the men and women who fought on the battlefront and served on the Home Front. For more information, call 877-813-3329 or 504-528-1944 or visit nationalww2museum.org.