Virginia Boles: Ashbrook's 2025 Outstanding Teacher Award Winner

Virginia (Ginny) Boles, the winner of Ashbrook’s 2025 Outstanding Teacher Award, teaches Social Studies at the Oakcrest School in Vienna, Virginia—an independent girls’ school in the Catholic tradition. At Oakcrest, Ginny frames her classes with two essential questions: “‘What is the role of government?”; and, “What is required to create—and then sustain—a free republican government?” These questions guide all the courses she teaches, whether it is sixth grade Ancient History, 11th grade American History, 12th grade Government, or Modern World History.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in classics from UCLA and will receive her Masters degree in May from Ashbrook’s Master of Arts in American History and Government program. Her Masters thesis is entitled: Limited Government and the General Welfare: The Founders and the Progressives on the Role of Government in Attaining the Common Good.