Go Beyond the Film: Teaching With “Young Washington”

Young Washington brings George Washington’s formative years to the screen, offering students a look at the experiences that shaped America’s first president. Through a partnership with the Bill of Rights Institute, schools using Swank Educational Streaming can pair the film with an extensive collection of teaching resources that bring history into focus.

A well-chosen film can give students a compelling way into a subject. What happens next is what turns watching into learning: the questions students ask, the evidence they weigh and the connections they draw back to the lesson.

That’s why we don’t stop at the film. Swank Educational Streaming pairs feature films, documentaries and educational series with resources that help educators use them with purpose, and partnerships like ours with the Bill of Rights Institute are a big part of how we do it.

Young Washington is one example of how Swank Educational Streaming helps educators go beyond the film. Through our partnership with the Bill of Rights Institute, schools can stream the film alongside a robust collection of resources designed to help students explore historical events, examine primary sources and connect what they see on screen to classroom learning.

What “Young Washington” Teaching Resources Are Available?

The Bill of Rights Institute, a nonprofit civic education organization, built its “Young Washington” collection to help students examine historical decisions, analyze primary sources and connect the film’s story to historical evidence. Resources include:

• Discussion guides: Prompts that help students examine Washington’s choices, character and the context he was working in.
• Lesson activities: Classroom activities that connect moments from the film to broader historical content.
• Story Explorer resources: Tools for digging into the people, places and events behind the story.
• Background context and character biographies: Historical grounding on Washington and the figures who shaped his early life.
• Primary source strategies: Approaches for connecting the film to documents and evidence from the period.
• Historian roundtable: A 45-minute conversation in which director Jon Erwin and leading historians discuss the civic principles at the heart of the film.
• Lesson adaptations for upper grades: Ways to extend the material for older students.

Find the full collection on the Bill of Rights Institute’s “Young Washington” resource page.