Dear teachers, 

With less than two weeks until Election Day, we are preparing for the conclusion of the U.S. Embassy School Election Project. Here are some important updates for you and your students:

1. Casting your ballot and participating in the school competition

Because of the fall holidays in some parts of Germany, we have extended the official deadline to participate in the school competition to Tuesday, October 27, at midnight. There are two major ways to conclude your project:

• Required: Submit a prediction: We ask all registered participants to please make a prediction for their adopted U.S. state, even if you consider your state a solid state for one of the two parties. You can do this on behalf of your course.
• Voluntary: Submit a creative project documenting your work:  By submitting your creative outcome on behalf of your course, you are participating automatically in the school competition. Make sure the product does not violate any copyrights, so check and double-check that your visuals or music used to illustrate your project are copyright free.  Obtain permission by your students or their legal guardians if the product contains visual materials depicting your students (more information under the link below).
  

Uploading your prediction and/or creative project documentation: The link to submit the prediction of your state’s election outcome and your course’s competition entry is the same: https://www.teachaboutus.org/mod/data/view.php?id=29943  

(Alternatively, visit the Virtual Town Hall and access the database “Ballot box and competition” in the course section “School competition”. You’ll also find the link the orange box in the right-hand margin of your Moodle course.

If you have not created a user account on Teach About U.S., you can instead indicate your course's prediction in a separate form on our start page that does not require to log in: https://www.teachaboutus.org/calendar/view.php?view=day&course=1&time=1603839540#event_319 

Please don’t hesitate to contact us should you need help with this. 

2. Project conclusion and live event (Nov. 2, 2020)

Because of the current situation, the project will conclude in a virtual format. These are our plans:

• 1^st prize winners of the school competition will be notified after the jury meeting (before the weekend). They will be invited to briefly introduce their project and accept their award certificate as part of the ceremony during our online event on Nov. 2 (see below).
• The students’ predictions will be posted on the www.teachaboutus.org on the morning of Nov 2 along with a press release by Leuphana University.
• Winners and runners-up will receive an award certificate; all others will be provided a certificate of participation.
  

Live event: U.S. Embassy School Election Project 2020: 
Project conclusion and award ceremony
Monday, November 2, 18:30-20:00 German time (12.30 PM-02.00 PM EST)

Guests:

• Dr. Terri Towner, Associate Professor of Political Science, Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan
• Dr. David Goldfield, Robert Lee Bailey Prof. of History, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
• Winners of the school competition
• The Teach About U.S. Team and partners
  

Moderators: Izaak Martin (Deputy Cultural Attaché, U.S. Embassy Berlin), and project team representatives Dr. Martina Kohl (Cultural Affairs Specialist, U.S. Embassy), and Joannis Kaliampos (Project Manager 'Teach About U.S.,' Leuphana University Lüneburg) 

Access/registration via Zoom: https://leuphana.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ue11AP1mTyCll7SnnAgKcQ

Encourage your students to join us for this event! (The webinar has a max. capacity of 1,000 participants.) For more information, visit the “Online Seminars” tab on our website.

3. Press

Several participants have already been connected to regional and national media outlets or have taken the initiative to approach local newspapers. To help you with this, we have put together a press page including a fact sheet for journalists as well as a short press release.  You can use them both for your school website or forward them  to your local press contacts to report about your project participation. We have also published a list of participating schools, so we might receive additional press inquiries in the coming days and will try to connect them with participants.

• Press page: https://www.teachaboutus.org/mod/book/view.php?id=33617&chapterid=7138
• Press fact sheet:  https://www.teachaboutus.org/pluginfile.php/54988/mod_book/chapter/7138/Fact%20Sheet%20School%20Election%20Project%202020%20%2821.09.%29.pdf

4. Further down the road…

As during previous projects, we are currently preparing an online feedback survey for students and teachers. More information on this will be sent out before the project conclusion. We ask you (and your students) to help us generate valuable insights from this project for future project cycles.

We are planning to organize a project review session with participating teachers and students to gather direct feedback during Thanksgiving week. Details will follow after Nov. 2.

All the best,

Joannis Kaliampos