The 2025 National Middle School Ethics Challenge is here! This essay contest encourages middle-level students to reflect on the impact of ethical behavior in their lives.
This essay competition is open to students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. National winners will receive a digital badge, certificate, plaque, and monetary award.
Download this flyer to help spread the word!
Ethics Challenge FlyerTopic: Doing the Right Thing: Ethics in School, Life, and Work
Prompt: Ethics are the basic principles that guide our behavior. They help us determine right from wrong. Ethical principles (e.g., integrity, trust, accountability, transparency, fairness, respect, rule of law, viability) provide a framework for decision-making in the classroom, at home, with friends, and beyond.
For this essay, select an ethical principle and describe what it means in your own words. Then provide an example of this ethical principle in school, outside class (e.g., at home, with friends, in the community), and in a career. To accompany the career portion, interview an adult in your life (e.g., teacher, administrator, business professional, family member) to learn how they work with ethics in mind.
Length: Submissions should be between 500 and 1,000 words.
Formatting: All pages are to be double-spaced. Use 12-point Times New Roman font. Margins are to be 1 inch left, right, top, and bottom.
Judging: Essays will be judged based on the rubric for adherence to the topic, organization, spelling, grammar, punctuation, and originality.
Student Prizes: All students will be recognized!
Teacher Prizes: For each student submission, teachers will be entered into a drawing for a $50 gift card. Teachers of winning students will also receive a prize!
To enter the contest, teachers should submit student essays to MS-Ethics@MBAResearch.org with teacher name and email, student name, and state.
Encourage students to:
To succeed in this ethics challenge, students should have a foundational understanding of ethical principles. We recommend using our free resources below:
Developed with the help of the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) and a middle school advisory network, these materials include comprehensive, ready-to-use lesson plans that integrate social-emotional learning geared for middle school students. The package includes:
Our career exploration course emphasizes introspective and experiential skills as students prepare for their future careers. The package includes a 69-page course guide and 20 PowerPoint-based instructional modules.
Module components include an ethical dilemma, narrative, discussion questions, online resources, activities, and a journal prompt—everything you need for a ready-to-use lesson plan!
All essays must be original work—plagiarism will result in disqualification. The contest is open to sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students in the United States and Canada. The submission deadline is 11:59 p.m. ET on Thursday, May 15, 2025.
This essay contest is made possible thanks to the generosity of the Daniels Fund, a foundation in Colorado supporting principle-based ethics education.