For Teachers

Classroom Activities

Buiding classroom activities around the Being an American essay topic will help your students to generate new ideas, consider multiple perspectives, and focus their responses with more depth. In short, it will help them write better essays!

A complete classroom activity, designed for a 45-minute class period, can be found here.

A set of inspirational quotations that can be used for pre-writing activities or as prompts for small or large group discussion can be found here.

A handout containing essay writing tips can be found here.

Additional resources can be found in the For Students section of this website.

Getting Started

You can register to participate by going to the Teacher Registration Form. Some teachers submit essays for self-motivated students who have discovered the contest on their own; some teachers invite students to submit essays to the contest for extra credit; some teachers assign the essay to their whole class; and some teachers use our lesson plan and activities as a way of talking about civic values with their students before asking students to reflect on civic values by writing on the essay topic.

However you choose to participate, we ask you to submit up to five of the best essays your students have written. These essays will be judged blindly by a panel of current and former high school teachers from around the country.