White House history awaits

Published 10:09 pm Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Perhaps no single building in the United States is as steeped in history as the White House, and a Suffolk teacher will be able to learn more about it and other Washington, D.C., history during a special program this summer.

Kelly Voshall is a rookie teacher but knows plenty about the world. She’s a U.S. Navy veteran who served 20 years and graduated from college “at the ripe young age” of 54, as she put it to a Suffolk News-Herald reporter this week.

She’s a sixth-grade history teacher at King’s Fork Middle School, and this interesting program called the White House History Teacher Institute will afford her the opportunity to learn more about a building she’s always found fascinating and the people who have walked its halls.

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Voshall even has a model of the White House in her classroom, as well as the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. The five-day workshop will include a stay at George Washington University and lectures at the David M. Rubenstein National Center for White House History.

“I’m most excited to just be able to interact with other teachers and listen to historians speak,” Voshall said.  “I’m also excited to tour the White House. I’m hoping that this being the White House Institute that we get more than the 30-minute tour and get more in depth.”

Eight hours’ worth of lectures, site visits and activities will fill Voshall’s day each of the five days of the program. We expect that she will return with a renewed appreciation of the White House and its history and be able to pass that on to her students for the years to come.