Educating the Spirit of Liberty Contest
The Freedom Festival Educating the Spirit of Liberty Contest is designed to recognize and honor teachers who demonstrate ability and apply effort to motivate and inspire students to become effective citizens of our nation.
- Entry Deadline is April 1, 2025
Awards and Prizes
Cash prizes will be based on judging criteria.
Grade 10-12: Win up to $500.00
Grade 7-9: Win up to $250.00
Grade 4-6: Win up to $100.00
Grade K-3: Win up to $75.00
Contest Guidelines
Theme: First Amendment
Eligibility: Open to teachers of all grades K-12
Entry Format: PDF, Docx
Submission Deadline: April 1
Divisions: K-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12
The Freedom Festival Teacher Contest is designed to recognize and honor classroom teachers who demonstrate ability to motivate and inspire students to become effective citizens of our nation. Teachers to be honored:
- Foster a learning environment that engages students in a positive view of American history;
- Employ innovative instructional practices that address Freedom Festival themes and values;
- Encourage students to use their understanding of the American founding and guiding documents to become engaged, informed citizens in their communities and nation;
- Make effective use of documents, artifacts, histories, and other credible sources to engage students with American history; and Models good citizenship.
The Freedom Festival Teacher Contest is open to ALL Teachers in grades K-12, whether in traditional public schools, public chartered schools, private schools, or home schools. Judging will be broken in divisions K-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12.
Email us for support at: teachercontest@freedomfestival.org.
Download The Educational Events Poster
Judging Criteria
Entries are judged on a teacher’s exposition of the theme in the course of their classwork, depth of insight in teaching, use of curriculum supplied by the Freedom Festival or other supporting materials, and any other innovative ways used to address Freedom Festival theme and values. The percentage of your students entries in the art, essay, and speech contests where it would apply will be taken into consideration.
The founders of our nation believed that we must have the right to think, believe, argue, and worship freely, and, in turn, to express our beliefs to our fellow citizens and to our government as freely as possible. That idea—the freedom of conscience—is the core of the First Amendment. Some possible questions or issues to be considered in essays:
1. What if there were no First Amendment? How would your life be affected?
2. Do you think the freedoms identified in the First Amendment would already be protected in a democracy where citizens have a role in shaping the government? Was it necessary to establish these rights in an official document?
3. Explain and give examples of how the First Amendment does not permit people to do anything they want to do. How and why are the liberties and rights of people not unlimited? In what kinds of situations do you think it is fair and reasonable to limit freedom of expressions?
4. Are the First Amendment freedoms among the “self-evident” and “unalienable rights” referred to in the Declaration of Independence? What is the relationship of the Declaration of Independence to the Bill of Rights?
5. Explain Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis statement that the founding generation “believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that without free speech and assembly discussion would be futile; that with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine; that the greatest menace to freedom is an inert people; that public discussion is a political duty; and that this should be a fundamental principle of the American government.