Teach About U.S.

Teach About U.S. is an intercultural blended-learning platform and your one-stop destination for innovative project ideas on teaching American studies. We invite teachers and students on both sides of the Atlantic to explore new ways of learning English and to ‘go green’ together.

Teach About US is a joint program developed by the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, Leuphana University Lüneburg and LIFE e.V.

Teach About U.S. invites teachers and students interested in up-to-date teaching content about U.S. culture to participate in three  award-winning projects. Create an account and check out “Going Green – Education for Sustainability” and the “Project Week – Power to the People” an interdisciplinary project week on community energy planning to bridge the Science and English language classrooms. In addition, every four years, the U.S. Embassy School Election Projects calls German students to predict the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. In 2016, the “U.S. Embassy School Election Project 2016” attracted over 3,000 participants.

The platform is primarily geared towards the English as a foreign language and CLIL classrooms, but we also encourage social science teachers to use our materials on both sides of the Atlantic. Invite your U.S. or Germany based partner school to participate in a ‘transatlantic tandem’ or start a partnership via our platform!

Going Green – Education for Sustainability

Since the first pilot project was launched in 2014, over 2.000 students and their teachers in Germany as well as partners in the U.S. participated in Going Green – Education for Sustainability. Participants enrolled on a shared learning platform and explored how sustainable development is targeted in both cultures, focusing on best practice examples and local case studies. Learners connected project contents to their own communities, reached out to local policy makers and businesses in an effort to design and initiate their own sustainability action plans. These project ideas were soon put into practice in schools and communities. In 2015, Going Green – Education for Sustainability was awarded as Landmark in the Land of Ideas in the prestigious initiative Germany – Land of Ideas, supported by the German Federal Government and Deutsche Bank.

The goal of Going Green is to foster interest in innovative sustainability research across the curriculum including the humanities, languages and STEM subjects, to encourage civic engagement, and develop job qualifications for young people. In the 2017-18 school year, we launched a project week in addition, addressing renewable energies from a science and cultural studies perspective. Students will explore the challenges of energy systems in the 21st century, the science behind renewable energies, and ways to implement them in the local context.

In 2022 we have designed a new teaching module for the Going Green – Education for Sustainability project. To the modules “Plastic & Recycling”, Green Cities / Mobility”, “Food” and “Fashion”, we have added “Youth Participation – Sustainability.” The module seeks to inspire students to become active participants in promoting sustainability goals in their school and communities.

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