What does it mean that John's Gospel does not have an account of the institution of the Eucharist? I'm preparing a class on the institution of the Eucharist and my text says 


  "The Gospel of John includes no mention of the institution of the Eucharist"


it goes on to give the account, for reasons unknown to me, of Jesus washing His disciple's feet.  Which incidentally would have happened at about the same time as the institution of the Eucharist in the other Gospels.  The thing I noticed here is that in the same way that Jesus says we should consume His Body and Blood in remembrance of Him, He also says that we should wash each others feet.

Do washing feet and the Eucharist have anything to do with each other?  What could have made John write about washing feet and not what so certainly stuck out in the minds of the other Gospel authors and St. Paul.
John's Gospel does not contain many of the things recorded in the Synoptics, including the Sermon on the Mount, the Transfiguration, the virgin birth, the Great Commission, and the Ascension.  In fact, the only miracle outside of the Resurrection that appears in both the Synoptic gospels and John's gospel is the feeding of the 5,000.

This doesn't mean that John considered these things as unimportant at all.  If John were, in fact, written much later than the other gospels, then perhaps John did not feel the need to replicate material that was already well established.  

John writes for a very specific purpose, asserting that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing we may have life in His name. (John 20:30-31)  So, the material he selects is done so for the purpose of supporting that premise.  All the miracles and all the teachings center around that premise.  The Eucharist appears to have not fit into that selection criteria for him, since it doesn't appear in the book.