Professional Development

Be inspired to use postal history and philately in your teaching and learning. The National Postal Museum offers a variety of professional development resources for early childhood through secondary educators and beyond.

In addition to our scheduled workshops and existing digital resources, we can create customized, interactive in-person or virtual workshops for in-service days and other professional development opportunities upon request.

For more information, send an email to NPMeducation@si.edu.

Upcoming Programs

Please check back soon for upcoming educator programs. To be notified of future programs, join our mailing list, here.

Webinars

Four people are in a video conference for the National Education Summit 2024. The screen also includes an ASL interpreter.

Cross Content Approaches to Youth Climate Action

Smithsonian National Education Summit, 2024 | July 16, 2024
By engaging in interdisciplinary inquiries into complex issues like climate change, educators have the power to foster comprehensive understanding, support diverse learners, and ignite a passion for climate activism. Join Smithsonian educators as they explore this idea using museum resources. Taking a multi-dimensional lens to explore climate change through civics, art, and science, learn transferable techniques to engage students in deeper thinking and action.

Learn more

Five objects representing creative approaches to changemaking

Inspiring Creative Changemakers

Smithsonian National Education Summit 2023 | July 20, 2023

How can museum resources help your students make creative interventions and take action on issues they care about? Five Smithsonian museums joined together to explore connections among their collections and discovered ways artists had creatively reckoned with our nation’s racial conflicts, past and present. Participants learned transferrable techniques to engage students in deeper thinking and object-based learning and left with a ready-to-use mini-lesson and a set of three free online courses to extend their professional development.

Learn more

A video freeze frame showing text about social emotional learning and an educator helping a young student

Be a History Detective

Promoting Historical Thinking Skills in Young Learners
Smithsonian National Education Summit 2023 | July 19, 2023

Anyone can be a history detective! Participants learned how history experts at the Smithsonian used important social-emotional learning skills like perspective-taking, critical thinking, and communication in their work and how they exercised their history detective skills in the classroom and beyond. Participants heard directly from Smithsonian experts from the National Postal Museum, National Museum of African American History and Culture, and National Museum of American History on how to use museum collections to incorporate historical thinking strategies into lesson plans to help students build empathy, think critically about the past, and develop civil discourse skills.

Learn more

The 1934 Federal Duck stamp is to the left of a portrait of Julie Packard by the artist Hope Gangloff

In Dialogue: Smithsonian Objects and Social Justice

With the National Portrait Gallery | December 8, 2022

In this collaboration between the National Portrait Gallery and the National Postal Museum, heighten your civic awareness through conversations about art, history and material culture as educators explore how ongoing environmental efforts inspire us to engage and act in our communities and beyond? This question is investigated in relationship to a 1934 stamp from the Federal Duck Stamp Program and a 2019 portrait of marine biologist Julie Packard by the artist Hope Gangloff.

Learn more

Explore more video resources from the National Postal Museum, here.

Articles

Children handing letters to a mail clerk at a post office.

Field Trips Deepen Student Learning and Connections

Smithsonian Voices | September 13, 2023

Explore how students can engage in free field trip experiences at the National Postal Museum that focus on storytelling though design, problem solving, and object-based learning.

Learn more

Equitable Access to Quality Early Earning Experiences Matter

Smithsonian Voices | December 1, 2022

Early learning educators share what a future might look like, in which every child in the country has access to high-quality early learning experiences and the resulting long-lasting impacts.

Learn more

An adult is listening to children as they complete work at a table.

Learning through Listening

Smithsonian Voices | February 25, 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic provided the rare opportunity for many of us to slow down and listen to the world around us. At the Smithsonian, listening is an essential part of our work. Listening to individuals, communities, and organizations helps us better understand and serve the public as well as document and preserve our nation’s history.

Learn more

Courses

Two adults standing in front of pigeonhole mailboxes in a Railway Post Office train car.

Interrogating the Stories We Tell

The Smithsonian Summer Sessions | SmithsonianX | Self-Paced

In this self-paced course, join Educators from six Smithsonian museums as they dive deeply into objects in their collections to interrogate the stories we know and tell our studies. They will explore connections among their collections and model teaching strategies that participates can implement with their students.

Learn more

A group of children closely examining postage stamps.

Inspiring Civic Engagement

The Smithsonian Summer Sessions | SmithsonianX | Self-Paced

In this self-paced course, join Educators from a cross the Smithsonian Institution as they investigate how museum objects can help lerners explore the challenges and opportunities of living in a democracy and inspire civic action.

Learn more