No matter where you are, you can learn about President Lincoln’s assassination and Civil War Washington through our distance-learning programs.

Through this unique program, students will learn one of President Abraham Lincoln’s historical speeches, the fundamentals of performance and public speaking skills. At the end of this project, your class is invited to create a video of the speech they learned to showcase their performance skills. 

Join this national cohort of 5th- through 8th-grade teachers in this multi-year professional development program designed to help integrate public speaking and performance skills into your classroom.

Have your students experience and explore the power of historical speeches. Open to classrooms grades three to eight located in the DC metro area. Classrooms receive five in-person visits with a Ford's Teaching Artist to learn and stage a historical speech performance. The program culminates with classrooms performing their selected speech on Ford's historic stage on one of two festival days in early February.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and in order to support social distancing, we will not be accepting group reservations, which means we will not be offering the free field trip program on-site this fall. We encourage you to consider a virtual field trip or other virtual program for your students this year.

Ford’s Theatre offers weekday student matinees, post-show discussions and tailored lessons to complement your curriculum.

Our Teacher Preview Workshops offer resources to teachers to engage deeply with their students about our current productions.

Learn about monuments and memorials in the nation’s capital and examine how we remember the Civil War in this week-long summer teacher program for 3rd- through 12th-grade teachers.

The city of Washington was a complex, gritty, unfinished and precarious place during the Civil War. In this institute, connect with peers to illuminate new perspectives and under-told stories, explore historic sites and collect a wealth of resources. Gain tools to help students grapple with histories whose legacies matter today in this program for K-12 educators.