As voting draws to a close, the 2024 U.S. presidential election is about to enter an unpredictable phase. This marks the final week for responses in the Headway Election Challenge surveys. With the nation now looking forward to Inauguration Day, we invite challenge participants to join us in one last project.

This election will soon be a topic in history classes. Throughout this year, we’ve explored its significance alongside a generation coming into political awareness. We’re now calling on our most engaged participants to answer one important question: What insights should future students of American democracy take away from the 2024 election?

To provide some background: at the start of 2024, The New York Times’ Headway team teamed up with Chalkbeat, a nonprofit newsroom, to gather high school students’ views on the election. Headway, known for tackling global challenges through a lens of progress, set out to examine America’s polarized democracy from the perspective of a generation reaching adulthood. After record youth turnout in 2020, we wanted to delve deeper into how young people see the nation’s democratic landscape.

Despite this high turnout, youth trust in democracy has been wavering. A Times/Siena poll in 2022 showed that 58% of Americans believed the government required major changes, with youth leading the call for reform. The poll revealed that 53% of respondents, up from 40% two years earlier, felt politics was too divided to resolve national issues. This disillusionment was most pronounced among young people, who lack memories of a less polarized political environment. As Times politics reporter Reid Epstein noted, nearly half of those aged 18-29 felt voting did not affect government operations.

As 2024 began, youth and adults shared an uncertain outlook on the election’s course, especially after the unrest on January 6, 2021. Skeptical young voters faced a choice between the two oldest presidential candidates in U.S. history. The sense of unpredictability increased through midsummer with the Democrats’ unprecedented change to their ticket, and polling consistently hovered near a fifty-fifty split. “Interesting” and “chaotic” were the words most commonly used by our participants to describe the election news.

Amid this turmoil, educators and students nationwide attempted to analyze the election together, though not all classrooms embraced the discussion. According to Chalkbeat, an EdWeek Research Center survey revealed that 58% of K-12 teachers planned to avoid discussing the election due to concerns over parental backlash and potential conflicts in the classroom.

The Election Challenge, in part, aimed to connect us with young people who, despite barriers to youth engagement, have dived into the election by registering voters, canvassing, and even drafting legislation. Many of our most active participants credited their classrooms with helping them understand the political process and their potential impact.

As we approach the end of the Election Challenge, we’re asking our most engaged participants to carry those insights forward. We are following up with the 80 individuals who consistently shared their thoughts with us, asking them to reflect on their journey and help us capture the election’s key takeaways.

With our Election Challenge questionnaires now closed, we have one final question open until Inauguration Day: In eight words or fewer, what has the 2024 election taught you?