“Doomed.” “Baffled.” “Scared.” “Happy.” “I don’t care.” “We are so cooked.”

Those were the reactions to the presidential election result that students scrawled on a white board Wednesday morning inside Joshua Ferguson’s 11th grade government class at Ypsilanti Community High School in Michigan.

Before he knew that former President Donald Trump had won a second term, Ferguson thought he would do a lesson on disinformation in politics. Instead, he gave students room to talk. The most important piece of this lesson, he said, was for his students to feel safe and heard.

“I think that’s my job as a teacher,” he said.

Educators across the country awakened Wednesday to the , then headed into school buildings where students were feeling everything from elation to shock to despair. Some had carefully scripted lesson plans at the ready. Others, like Ferguson, scrapped what they prepared and simply listened.

For civics and social studies teachers who had been monitoring the 2024 presidential election, Wednesday presented both a pedagogical challenge – and opportunity. Chalkbeat reporters fanned out to schools across the country to see how teachers approached this monumental day.

This story was reported by Caroline Bauman, Gabrielle Birkner, Hannah Dellinger, Jessie Gomez, Dale Mezzacappa, Amelia Pak-Harvey, Carly Sitrin, and Alex Zimmerman.

‘Why do people keep voting for Trump?’

Ahead of his 7:30 a.m. social studies class Wednesday, teacher John Winters had prepared a worksheet to spur conversation.

“As you know, [fill in the blank] has been elected as the next U.S. President,” the sheet read. “Please share your thoughts, feelings, concerns, questions, etc.”

His students at Philadelphia’s Murrell Dobbins Career & Technical Education High School didn’t need much prompting.

“He IS a convicted felon and should’ve never been allowed to run ever again,” wrote one student.

People “don’t want to see a girl/woman be the president,” wrote another.

“Why do people keep voting for Trump? Especially people that he doesn’t even like and is racist towards?” still another wrote.

The responses conveyed dismay and fear among some at the 800-student technical school, which is 89% Black and located in the city’s lowest income ZIP code.

At the end of the class, one junior held back to talk to Winters. Anxiety, even fear, was written all over his face as he struggled for words.

He asked a series of questions, like how many bills a president could pass and how an impeached president could be elected again. Winters answered but sensed there was something larger the boy wanted to know.

“I was born here, but I’m scared for my parents,” he said. “They’re from Haiti. It’s bad there right now.”

Winters reminded him that strongly Democratic Philadelphia has been a sanctuary city, meaning it doesn’t always cooperate with the federal government in enforcing immigration law. He told the young man to clarify with his parents their status. But then, reluctantly, he added: “I can’t lie, it’s a concerning situation.”

The boy put his head down, and slowly walked to his next class.

A rightward shift, especially among boys

At The Global Learning Collaborative, a high school situated in the deep-blue Upper West Side of Manhattan, students reacted to Trump’s victory with a mix of fear, ambivalence — and support.

More than 70% of the school’s students are Latino, and many expressed alarm over Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. But there was still a sizable number of students who supported the Republican candidate during a mock election held during a Wednesday morning assembly: 136 students voted for Vice President Kamala Harris, while 70 supported Trump.

Junior Alix Torres said she has undocumented relatives and worries about his promise to .

“I woke up kind of angry this morning,” Torres said, noting that she helped persuade some family members to vote for Harris. “I hope he hears the public and chooses to not go through with that. We built this country.”

Others at The Global Learning Collaborative said they supported Trump or didn’t have a firm opinion of him; nearly all were under 10 years old during his first presidency.

Senior Sara Otero, who is 18, voted for the first time on Tuesday, casting a ballot for the former president. A devout Christian, Otero said she believed Trump would preserve religious liberty, though she hadn’t followed the election closely.

“I wasn’t as educated as I wish I was on the whole thing,” she said.

Harris decisively won New York City, but . Civics teacher Martin Gloster said he has seen a rightward shift in political attitudes in his classroom.

“I think teenage boys are really attracted to that strongman presence,” he said.

Gloster said he has struggled with teaching contemporary politics, including the presidential debate in which Trump Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs. In a class that discussed the debate, one student had faced an arduous journey emigrating from Guatemala, while others were more sympathetic to Trump.

“It’s difficult because obviously I play it down the middle — Trump is just a different thing,” Gloster said. “I’m learning on the fly. I don’t have all the answers.”

Taking lessons from Gore’s 2000 concession speech

When Reid Stuart arrived for his first class on Wednesday, he had three goals for students: Give space to process this huge political moment, impart tools to – and watch Al Gore’s concession speech from 2000.

“It’s an incredible speech, by a Tennessean, after a tense moment that calls for unity,” said Stuart, who teaches at Crosstown High School, a diverse public charter school in Memphis, Tennessee. “It feels relevant.”

His students in AP Human Geography settled into class, some joking with each other about the election and others speaking somberly.

Before watching , Stuart asked: What did his students expect from a conceding presidential candidate?

“To show respect to the other candidate.” “To show respect for the system.” “To actually concede,” students chimed in.

Stuart then asked, “If you are Al Gore, how are you feeling?”

“Cheated.” “Mad.” “Unaccepting of loss.” “Bitter.”

Gore, a Democrat, gave his speech more than a month after the 2000 Election Day and after .

Stuart asked his students what they thought of Gore’s delivery and message.

“I think he was being sarcastic,” said one student. “Like you could tell he didn’t really believe what he was saying, and felt like he should have won, but he still called for unity and respect.”

As other students in the room nodded in agreement, Stuart said: “This is a hallmark of a free and fair election, that the person who lost, can get up there and offer a unifying message, even if he is bitter. Right?”

He noted that later Wednesday. “I encourage you to watch it,” he told students. “See if she has the same message of unification and moving forward, even though you can guarantee she is feeling deeply about the loss.”

An election that turned on grocery prices and utility bills

Philadelphia social studies teacher Charlie McGeehan prepared for every election outcome – but, he admitted to his students Wednesday morning, “this is not what I expected.”

When he went to bed Tuesday night before midnight, McGeehan had anticipated explaining to the juniors and seniors in his classes about how long vote counting can take. About how we might not know the outcome of the election for several days. About the role deep-blue Philadelphia would play in deciding the election.

By the time he woke on Wednesday, that plan was moot. So, he figured, let’s just give the students — many of whom had spent long hours working the polls the day prior — space to decompress.

Together, they combed through the election results guided by students’ questions like “How was the polling yesterday so surprising?” “Which state did the race ultimately come down to?” and “Does Kamala Harris have any path to winning at all?”

To that last question, McGeehan was straightforward: “No, she doesn’t.”

Many of McGeehan’s students at the Academy at Palumbo are first- or second-generation Americans or immigrants. On notecards, students laid out their more personal fears, ones they didn’t necessarily want to share with the class.

“As a woman and a child of an immigrant, I’m honestly scared” read one. “I saw a post saying how Trump pledged to launch mass deportation… which makes me feel like not researching more because of how much more sick stuff I might read,” said another.

One said “I feel great because Trump’s [positions] align with what I want. Especially with the issues of censorship, grocery prices, and utility bills.”

‘Kind of a very depressing day’

Nehemiah Legrand tried to eat dinner Tuesday but couldn’t finish. She was glued to her phone. She was up until 3 a.m.

The 13-year-old student at Enlace Academy, a pre-K-8 school in the International Marketplace area of Indianapolis, is an American citizen by birth whose parents are legally living in the country. The family fled Haiti after her older brother was kidnapped in 2020 amid the country’s political turmoil.

Still, Trump’s campaign rhetoric around immigration scared Nehemiah – and made her fear that her family would be deported.

“I just feel like today — it doesn’t feel normal,” she said, sitting in the school’s hallway on Wednesday, looking out the window at the rain. “People are not talkative or none of that. It’s very, very strange. It’s kind of a very depressing day. Because everyone just doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, and you can tell everyone is stressed.”

The presidential election has over her and her classmates at the school, where many students come from Latin America and Haiti. At this school, students have to grow up fast. Many carry trauma from their immigration to the United States, said lead social worker Hailey Butchart.

Now, students like Nehemiah are preparing for what the next four years with Trump — whose platform includes deploying “the largest deportation operation in American history” — will mean for them.

“A lot of the students I speak with have had a family member that has been deported, and they live with that fear as well,” Butchart said.

The power of social media in elections

On the morning after Election Day, Zy’Asia Weathers rolled over in bed to grab her phone on a nearby nightstand and scrolled through TikTok.

But instead of seeing videos of makeup reviews or the latest trends, Zy’Asia’s feed was filled with women and girls crying about the outcome of Tuesday’s election and the potential impact on female reproductive rights.

“People were even saying, like, very vague things, like, just thinking the worst of the worst,” added Zy’Asia, 17, a senior at KIPP Newark Collegiate Academy.

Throughout the school day Wednesday, Zy’Asia and her peers talked about other videos they saw, like people celebrating former president Donald Trump’s reelection and others questioning what his victory would mean for the nation.

Zy’Asia is also the president of her school’s Student Government Association, and on Wednesday, the group met to discuss the presidential outcomes. Yanibel Feliz, the advisor of the group, walked students through an exercise to discuss the election process, the outcome, and the effect of social media.

Some students said they were shocked about Trump’s victory because they had seen much support for Harris on social media.

“Sometimes, social media might paint a picture of how elections will go,” said Trinity Douglas, a junior at the school, during class. “But it has a big effect on our generation.”

‘I’m afraid what will happen to my family’

The icebreaker in Joel Snyder’s government classes on Wednesday was to respond to the prompt: “I am feeling … because …”

The responses were wide-ranging and included students who were enthusiastic about the election outcome and those who were disappointed the U.S. would not, after all, elect a woman as president.

In the few minutes they were given, students took pencil to paper and wrote that they were “shocked” to hear how well Trump did with Latinos, “furious” at what they saw as sexism in the results, and “concerned” that America had once again elected a man whose flaws and felony convictions are, by now, well known.

Some answers hit closer to home. “I am feeling uneasy,” one student wrote, “because I’m afraid what will happen to my family who are undocumented.”

Standing at the front of his class at Ánimo Pat Brown Charter High School in the Florence-Firestone neighborhood of South Los Angeles, the teacher reminded his students that whether or not they are U.S. citizens, they have “the duty to be the protectors of democracy and of each other.” Snyder teaches about 140 students across five government classes, including one AP course. Of the roughly 600 students enrolled at Ánimo Pat Brown, almost all of them are Hispanic — their families hailing from Mexico, Guatemala, and elsewhere in Latin America.

Snyder also asked his students to write down one issue that they care about and how they think Trump’s election might impact it. The students chose abortion rights, the economy, constitutional norms, and, again and again, immigration. They shared their fears of mass deportations and stories of family members who had waited years for green cards they may never get.

“My main concern is how, even despite being a citizen, I still won’t be protected because my parents are immigrants,” Natalie, 17, a student in Snyder’s AP U.S. Government and Politics class, told Chalkbeat.

This was originally published by Chalkbeat. Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

This story was published in collaboration with Headway, a new initiative at The New York Times. Chalkbeat and Headway have been to educators and high school students since February. We have heard from more than 1,000 students and 200 teachers across the nation.

This presidential election year, young Americans are navigating a chaotic world of information, often with limited tools to distinguish what’s credible, what’s questionable, and what’s downright false.

A found that while many young people can detect images generated by artificial intelligence with ease, they struggle to differentiate news from commentary and advertisements and regularly encounter conspiracy theories on social media. Eight in 10 respondents said they believed at least one of those conspiracy theories.

and their peers told us that they regularly encountered false information online about the election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump. Some teachers have dedicated and fact-checking.

And many students have told us they have gained confidence in spotting falsehoods. We asked more than 1,000 students about what tips them off that a piece of information might be false or misleading, what’s their approach to verifying information, and what advice they have for other teenagers. Here’s what we heard.

Responses have been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

How teens know if information is sketchy, made up or manipulated

“If the content I’m seeing is triggering an extreme emotional reaction in me — rage, fear or joy, to name a few — without offering nuanced context, it leads me to think that it might be designed to mislead. When I encounter something that seems absolutely certain about morally and politically complex topics, such as the Israel-Hamas war, without acknowledging alternative views or uncertainties, I suspect it’s oversimplifying reality to push an agenda.”

— Sena Chang, 18

College freshman at Princeton University in New Jersey

“Articles that sound sketchy, made up, or manipulated are a red flag. Some media sources get rid of the bits and pieces of context that make a situation understandable. And media outlets sometimes contradict each other. Check and cross-check media. When a true piece of media spreads like wildfire, some media outlets will try and get attention from the situation and end up spreading lies about the situation. That’s why I find most articles about popular controversies annoyingly eye-rolling.”

— Antonette Davis, 14

Freshman at Central High School in Philadelphia

A single source doesn’t cut it for verifying what’s true

“I verify my information by getting it from multiple sources, not just people online who are crediting the original article I read. I also look at the information presented in the article from the perspective of a person who doesn’t know anything about the topic and see if the article and the ideas presented still make sense.”

— Yoni Zacks, 17

Senior at the Blake School in Minneapolis.

“More often than not I look it up on Google and read about it on a more reliable website. For example, if an article makes a claim about a piece of legislation, I try to find the full text of the cited legislation to better understand what it’s saying.”

— Olivia Garrison, 17

Graduated in 2023 from Davidson Academy in Reno, Nevada

“There’s a tool called Google Reverse Image Search that I use to check the origins of viral images or memes to see where they first appeared and if they’ve been repurposed out of context. During events like the presidential debate, I also looked at multiple websites offering real-time fact-checking like The New York Times to help contextualize what I was hearing and identify when what the candidates were saying was misinformation.”

— Sena Chang

“To verify information, I try to listen directly to candidates or their campaigns. I find this is the easiest way to understand the candidate’s policy plans, opinions on certain issues, and overall decorum. While commentary can be helpful, it often includes opinions that make me perceive certain things a certain way. Therefore, I find it important to directly hear from a political candidate first. Afterward, I listen to and watch video media with commentary. It helps me compare my understanding to someone else’s and clarify things I might not have fully understood.”

— Meghan Pierce, 18

Freshman at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Champaign, Illinois

How young people navigate a world of misinformation

“As a teenager, I get a lot of my information from social media. I know many other teenagers get their information this way, too, so my word of advice is to be aware of the algorithm and how you’re fed information usually from one side. You’re not getting the complete story, so do your research instead of trusting one source!”

— Emma Luu, 17

Junior at Pine Creek High School in Colorado Springs, Colorado

“Check anything you think is misleading with a quick search and cross-check if it’s legitimate or not.”

— Arnav Goyal, 14

Freshman at Olentangy Liberty High School in Powell, Ohio

“Become aware of media bias, and do your best to consider different perspectives and stay open-minded while being aware of media bias.”

— Lucas Robbins, 17

Senior at Mandela International Magnet School in Santa Fe, New Mexico

“My (unpopular) take is that fact-checking is easier than it seems. … ​Social media serves as an integral egalitarian news source where anyone can create and share primary source information no matter where they live in the world. However, using social media as a sole source of information can be dangerous. Sometimes even recognizing satirical news sources is hard — I have been a victim of thinking The Onion was a real news source. You don’t have to research every single headline you ever see. The internet can be an overload of information at times, and choosing to disconnect is a skill young people need. However, if you see something that raises eyebrows, understanding the context is just a Google search away.”

— Kush Kaur, 17

Freshman at Collin College in McKinney, Texas

Teenagers are inundated daily with a mix of credible information and fake news. Out of necessity, they’re sharpening their instincts to identify misinformation and building skills to verify or debunk it. Their advice is clear: Stay mindful of algorithmic influence, avoid relying on a single source, and remember that it’s OK to step back when it all feels overwhelming.

Need more insights? Explore the resources below.

Caroline Bauman is the deputy managing editor for engagement at Chalkbeat. Reach her at cbauman@chalkbeat.org.

Erica Meltzer is the national editor at Chalkbeat, where she covers education policy and politics. Reach her at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org

This was originally published by . Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools. Sign up for their newsletters at .

The federal law prohibiting sex discrimination also bars colleges and universities from denying counseling and other services to abortion patients and contraception to all students — even in states where abortion is now severely restricted, the U.S. Education Department said Tuesday.

The , which clarifies the longstanding rules for federal Title IX funding that virtually all colleges and universities receive, comes as several states have moved to ban or greatly limit abortion. The federal insistence on compliance with the Title IX regulations appears to be in conflict with some state policies.

The University of Idaho, for example, issued a memo last month  not to provide reproductive health counseling or contraception in order to comply with a state law.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris singled out the University of Idaho during a public meeting of the White House Reproductive Rights Task Force on Tuesday.

“They told university staff they could get in trouble just for talking or telling students about birth control,” Biden said, referencing the memo. “Folks, what century are we in?”

Idaho is among the 13 states where nearly all abortions are illegal following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in June that removed the nationwide right to an abortion, according to the reproductive rights policy research organization .

The Idaho Supreme Court  to hear oral arguments on the merits of three Idaho abortion laws.

The federal high court ruling “has sown fear and confusion on our college campuses,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said at the task force meeting.

Tuesday’s guidance was intended “to remind schools of their obligations under Title IX,” he added.

The department’s civil rights office  that a Utah community college violated Title IX by not making accommodations for a pregnant student and encouraging the student to drop a course because she was pregnant.

The University of Idaho memo said university employees could not provide patients with birth control or emergency contraception. The document referenced a 2021 law that bans public funding to “procure, counsel in favor, refer to or perform an abortion.”

Standard birth control can still be dispensed at student health facilities, whose workers are not employed by the university, according to the memo.

A spokeswoman for the university did not immediately return an email seeking comment on the Education Department guidance and Biden and Harris’ remarks.

Abortion bans have affected other health services, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday. Women have been denied prescriptions to treat miscarriage or conditions like arthritis and there are “threats to contraception,” including for college students, Jean-Pierre said.

Harris noted that 19th-century laws banning abortion in Arizona and Wisconsin have recently gone into effect.

Doctors testify

The White House task force outlined some dire consequences of state abortion bans.

In Wisconsin, the abortion ban is sending some patients to Minnesota and Illinois and leaving many who need care without access, Dr. Kristin Lyerly, a Green Bay OB-GYN, said.

And it’s had a chilling effect on abortion providers, who can now only perform an abortion when the mother’s life is at risk. But even the judgment required in that decision could scare doctors from performing a medically necessary procedure, she said.

“Pregnant people don’t have a warning light that comes on when they’ve crossed that threshold,” she said. “In places like Sheboygan County, where the district attorney has specifically said that he will prosecute physicians, can I count on him to trust my clinical judgment?”

Georgia OB-GYN Dr. Nisha Verma told the task force that she’s had to turn away patients with high-risk pregnancies or fetal abnormalities since that state’s six-week ban went into effect.

“Imagine looking someone in the eye and saying, ‘I have all the skills and the tools to help you. But our state’s politicians have told me I can’t,’” she said.

Appeal to Congress

Biden, Harris and Jean-Pierre all urged Congress to pass a law codifying a nationwide right to abortion.

“If there were a national law that was passed in the United States Congress to protect reproductive care, so-called (state) leaders could not ban abortion,” Harris said. “They could not criminalize providers. They could not limit access to contraception.”

Biden added that congressional Republicans would seek a nationwide abortion ban, alluding to South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s bill  to enact such a ban.

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Lhamon, who faced steep opposition from Republicans, will lead the Education Department office in charge of enforcing federal civil rights laws in schools, including rules that prohibit discrimination based on race and sex. She secured the post after a combative confirmation hearing in July, followed by a partisan 11-11 vote a month later in which members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee deadlocked on her nomination. Lawmakers voted earlier this month to discharge her nomination from committee and bring it before the full Senate. 

Harris’s vote, which broke a 50-50 tie, followed an effort by Republican lawmakers to block her return to a position she held from 2013 to 2017. She was unanimously confirmed in 2013, but became a lightning rod in several key education debates, including one that looked to hold K-12 schools and universities more accountable for sexual misconduct on campus. 

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said that Lhamon’s confirmation will help ensure that schools are “fairer and more just.”

“She will lead the Department’s vital efforts to ensure our schools and college campuses are free from discrimination on the basis of race, sex and disability and to protect all students’ rights in education,” Cardona said in a media release. “Catherine is one of the strongest civil rights leaders in America and has a robust record of fighting for communities that are historically and presently underserved.” 

In 2011, before Lhamon became assistant secretary, the Obama administration released a that instructed educators to investigate sexual misconduct allegations “regardless of where the conduct occurred,” and to use a less-strict “preponderance of the evidence” standard when determining guilt. Eight months into her tenure under former President Trump, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, whose confirmation was secured by a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Mike Pence, rescinded the guidance and replaced it with new Title IX regulations in 2020. The Biden administration the Obama-era guidance.

Civil rights groups have praised Lhamon as a champion for student equity, but her conservative critics have accused her of being an overzealous bureaucrat who went beyond her legal authority during her previous stint on the job. 

In 2014, the civil rights office to warn school districts that discipline policies could constitute “unlawful discrimination” if they didn’t mention race but had a “disproportionate and unjustified effect on students of a particular race.” In June, the to revisit how the Education Department can ensure racial equity in school discipline. 

While Democrats control the White House and both houses of Congress, Lhamon will be taking up her job at a time when battles over race and gender in schools have become even more divisive, as seen in several states recently moving to bar transgender students from playing sports.