STAUNTON, VA (Rocktown Now) — After more than 15 years, the American Frontier Culture Foundation is bringing back a program at the Frontier Culture Museum that reportedly provides immersive, hands-on learning for teachers across the state of Virginia.

According to officials, the American Frontier Culture Foundation was one of 19 nonprofit cultural organizations that received VA250 grant funding from Virginia Humanities to support programs that celebrate Virginia’s role in the nation’s founding.

The American Frontier Culture Foundation was awarded $9,900 to support the Summer 2027 Elementary Teacher Institute, which will provide 24 educators with immersive training on teaching the American Revolution through primary sources, material culture, and multiple historical perspectives.

The institute was created with the help of the Frontier Culture Museum’s Teacher Advisory Council, a panel of nine public school teachers from across the state, to ensure the program is designed around what educators need.

The 2027 theme, “Documents and Dishes: Using a Range of Primary Sources to Focus Student Inquiry into the American Revolutionary Era,” will guide a two-day professional development experience exploring how objects, foods, textiles, tools, and written records can deepen teachers’ understanding of the Revolutionary era and strengthen their ability to incorporate primary sources into classroom lessons.

“One reason we’re so excited about using different types of primary sources is because that often gives us a better glimpse into the lives of people who are not well documented in traditional sources, like letters, and wills, and essays,” Angela Lehman, Associate Director of Education for the American Frontier Culture Foundation, said. “Like the roles of women, the roles of Native Virginians, the roles of African Americans or enslaved Africans.”

Frontier Culture Museum staff will be working with professors from Mary Baldwin University and Eastern Mennonite University to lead workshops and teach lessons. Planned activities include cooking, working with flax and wool, practicing simple militia drills, and more, offering participants opportunities to explore historical skills and experiences firsthand.

“They will be doing hands-on activities as if they were students on a field trip, but also even more in depth, and then maybe getting ideas of how to take some of those hands-on activities back to their classrooms for students,” Lehman said. “This way we can reach even more students through their teachers and the materials they create, so that’s really exciting.”

To extend the Institute’s impact beyond the 24 participating teachers, lesson plans, slide decks, and curated primary source collections developed during the program will be made available through the museum’s website.

Learn more about the Frontier Culture Museum and the American Frontier Culture Foundation by visiting their websites: https://www.frontiermuseum.org/ and https://www.frontierculturefoundation.org.