America at 250  This is one of a trio of stories published in Summer 2026 about three of the Foundation’s civic learning grantees. These organizations are finding new ways to work toward a common goal: preparing young people to be informed, engaged citizens in our democracy. Our other two stories focus on Creating Citizens, the civics learning initiative of the Commonwealth Club World Affairs, and on Common Sense Media’s digital literacy curriculum.

iCivics was founded by Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 2009, shortly after her retirement from the bench. Today, the iCivics website honors Justice O’Connor’s vision and her conviction: “A most serious woman in her 70s, having never played a video game in her life, decided to found an organization that would transform civic learning through edu-games, supported by high-quality curriculum.” In its first full year of operation, iCivics released eight edu-games designed to make abstract civic concepts relevant and engaging to students, which is to say fun. The organization has now become the largest provider of civics education in the country, offering non-partisan curricula and training for 145,000 K–12 educators in all 50 states—reaching 9 million students each year. The element of fun is not incidental to iCivics’ approach—it is fundamental.

This is a fraught time for teachers of social studies, and iCivics listens intently to their “constituents.” More than 2,000 educators across the country responded to the organization’s recent survey, and the findings bear testimony to the teachers’ challenges and to their commitment:

More than half (53%) said teaching basic civics concepts now feels difficult, and an even higher number (59%) reported concern about backlash for teaching something the “wrong way.” These challenges notwithstanding, 89% of educators agreed that their teaching should ground students in civic knowledge, foster a pluralistic view of American society, and connect constitutional principles to events happening today.

iCivics has been a core grantee of our Civic Learning Initiative since we launched in 2022. Our funding supported the pilot of iCivics’ Teacher Facilitation Fellowship (iTFF)— a teach-the-teachers professional development approach —across 26 California counties. iTFF pairs intensive training with helping classroom teachers form a community of practice with their fellow civics educators. 

Over the past four years, iCivics has certified 127 Master Teacher Fellows, who have in turn trained several thousand more teachers. This corps of educators was ready to lead the charge in iCivics’ Civic Star Challenge, designed to celebrate the country’s 250th anniversary. iCivics collaborated with the Bill of Rights Institute to develop the Challenge, inviting—and inspiring—teachers in all 50 states to use the Declaration of Independence in their classrooms to explore contemporary civics issues. The two organizations developed a library of focused lessons as the basis for exploring various topics covered in the Declaration. Teachers shared their experiences through iCivics’ educator blog. Educator enthusiasm and creativity were definitely high. Hundreds of teachers entered the companion essay contest about why civic education is important today. Across the 2025–2026 school year, the Civic Star Challenge produced more than 4.4 million “civic impacts” and nearly 4,000 teacher testimonials describing what civic learning and life looked like in their classrooms. 

We had a chance to talk with Natacha Scott, Director of Educator Engagement, who offered this insight about the Civic Star Challenge: “Students almost always come to understand civic life through a teacher who has been given the time, materials, and confidence to lead them there. When a teacher helps a student work through what ‘consent of the governed’ means in the context of their own school or a current event they are already seeing play out at home, the student starts to see themselves inside the structure of democracy rather than outside of it.”

We asked Ms. Scott for a practical description of civic life. “It is the everyday version of democracy, the part that happens between elections. It’s the conversation at the school board meeting, the decision to speak up when something feels off in a neighborhood, the habit of reading something carefully before forming an opinion about it. We often reference something Justice O’Connor emphasized, that the small civic connections are what hold the bigger American experiment together.”

Ms. Scott went on to reflect on the realities of civics education, “The country often talks about civic learning and engagement as things it hopes young people will do. iCivics is working toward a world where they are actually prepared to do them, and where civic life feels normal and central rather than exceptional. Civic life encompasses the full set of knowledge, skills, and dispositions a person uses to participate in self-governance, from the classroom to the country.”

Megan Thompson’s essay won the Gold Star top prize—a $10,000 grant to her high school and a trip to a national civics conference. Thompson, who teaches AP Government and Politics, as well as Crime and Justice, works in Minneapolis, where the Civic Star Challenge coincided with a period of profound civil unrest. Thompson helped her students make sense of their constitutional rights to privacy and peaceful protest, drawing on America’s founding principles. She wrote, “To support students professionally without inserting myself politically, I offered primary sources and the content to encourage natural connections.” Louise Dubé, the CEO of iCivics, stated, “Megan’s winning essay embodies the spirit we want to see in classrooms across the country.”

As the 2025–2026 school year wound down, iCivics was ramping up for next year, incorporating insights and feedback from teachers across the country. Ms. Scott previewed a partnership with a “well-loved gaming company to bring you something exciting.” She confirmed that the team will be “making it easier to send and track student assignments.” And she announced the development of “brand-new resources to help you teach the rule of law.” The 2026–2027 school year will introduce a lot of serious fun from iCivics. We imagine Justice O’Connor would marvel.

Read on for reflections from educators on the Civic Star Challenge: