Tag Archives: High School Students

The Ultimate Election Forecast: More than 5,000 Pollsters Agree – The Next President of the U.S. is ….

By Joannis Kaliampos

The 2020 U.S. elec­tion has peo­ple around the world on the edge of their seats, won­der­ing who will become the next Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States. The two can­di­dates – for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and the incum­bent Pres­i­dent, Don­ald Trump – would become the old­est men to ever have held this office. Anoth­er ‘first’ is Biden’s VP pick, Kamala Har­ris, junior sen­a­tor from Cal­i­for­nia, the first-ever woman of col­or run­ning on a pres­i­den­tial tick­et. In addi­tion, a glob­al pan­dem­ic, an eco­nom­ic cri­sis, and nation­wide demon­stra­tions protest­ing sys­temic racism make this elec­tion more excit­ing than ever.

Pho­to cred­it: U.S. Embassy Berlin. Stu­dents par­tic­i­pate in a Q and A ses­sion with U.S. elec­tion experts at the con­clud­ing event of the 2016 elec­tion project at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Berlin.

While U.S. poll­sters, such as Lar­ry Saba­to or Nate Sil­ver, pre­dict a like­ly vic­to­ry for Demo­c­rat Biden, Trump’s 2016 sur­prise upset lead many poll­ster to ask how reli­able elec­tion polls real­ly are. And some­times, the best poll­sters are not those fea­tured in the news, but are those found in high school classrooms.

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2020 Haiku Contest

Compiled by the U.S. Consulate General Leipzig

“bro­ken win­dow” by Ilias Theodoropoulos

Just last month, the U.S. Con­sulate Gen­er­al Leipzig orga­nized a Haiku con­test for both high school and uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents. The mot­to for this cre­ative writ­ing chal­lenge was “Look­ing out­side – Look­ing inside,” that is, notic­ing the con­nec­tions between the change in sea­son and the change in one’s inter­nal land­scape. Stu­dents were asked to put their thoughts and feel­ings into a Haiku con­sist­ing of three lines and 17 syl­la­bles in total.

The con­sulate received about 100 sub­mis­sions from eight Ger­man states and places as far away as Nige­ria. Amer­i­can poet and now also haiku con­test judge, Jen­nifer Kro­novet, select­ed 10 of her favorite Haikus and com­ment­ed on her top three.

The blog edi­tors con­grat­u­late all win­ners. Keep up the good work!

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