The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum today announced it will sponsor a student mock press conference on Friday, February 26, at 2:00 p.m. in the school forum at Beverley Manor Middle School.  Judd Bankert, portraying President Woodrow Wilson, will take questions from 21 Beverley Manor seventh-graders acting as reporters.  Seventh-grader Cole Leonard, portraying Joseph P. Tumulty, Wilson’s secretary, will assist the President at the event, and the entire seventh-grade will attend.  The school is located at 58 Cedar Green Road in Augusta County just west of the City of Staunton.  The phone number at the school is (540) 886-5806.   

The mock press conference is particularly appropriate because President Wilson was the first President to hold regular press conferences.  The program marks the conclusion of the seventh-graders’ study of the World War I era.  Teachers Scarlett Kiser, John Sayers and Cynthia Bolin teach the unit, designed the program, and selected the student reporters.  The students did additional research to compose their questions, and each of the 21 reporters will have the opportunity to ask a question of President Wilson.  

Don W. Wilson, President and CEO of the WWPL, said, “The Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum is pleased to sponsor this living history event, a novel way to teach about this important time in our nation’s past.  We commend these teachers for designing such an innovative program and the students for their enthusiastic participation.”   

This program is a part of the WWPL’s educational outreach program.  The Presidential Library regularly hosts area students for interactive programs that meet Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) requirements.  In the “Journey Into History” program and the “Professor, President, Peacemaker” program, students engage in a guided tour of Woodrow Wilson's birthplace and group activities in the Woodrow Wilson Museum and the Presidential Library’s classroom and education parlor.  The WWPL also hosts two “Journey Into History” camps, three-day interactive history camps with a different theme each summer.

For more information about the Press Conference or any of the Presidential Library’s school programming, contact Ellen Abernethy, Museum Educator, at eabernethy@woodrowwilson.org, or at (540) 885-0897, ext. 110, or visit the website at www.woodrowwilson.org.