FAQ for teachers and educators

Most likely, yes. We visit a wide range of schools: public, private, and everything in between. What matters most is the age group: Our sessions are designed especially for students aged 10-15.

We currently offer classroom visits in the countries where Lie Detectors is active. We are always happy to discuss how we can make it work for your setting. 

Yes. We’re committed to reaching underserved schools, including those in rural areas.

In addition to in-person visits, we offer a well-tested and highly-rated digital format that allows us to visit classrooms even in the most remote parts of the countries where we operate.

Lie Detectors is based on the principle that face-to-face contact with journalists has a positive effect on the critical consumption of news and information.

We facilitate this contact by selecting and training working journalists to speak about digital disinformation and quality journalism with young people. Through open and honest conversations about their work, journalists offer students a direct and authentic perspective from someone actively engaged in the media field. 

Journalist classroom workshops are free of charge for all schools.  

If you’d like to make a donation, please click here.

Lie Detectors receives the majority of its funding from the US-based Wyss Foundation and is accredited as a charity by donor-advised fund Myriad.

Lie Detectors is non-partisan and our remit is universal. We take no funding from political parties and none from internet intermediaries such as Meta and Google, a position that is cited by 77% of teachers as an important or very important factor in their decision to host Lie Detectors in their classrooms. Several of our projects are funded via EU, regional and philanthropic grants. 

If you’d like to make a donation or discuss a project or grant, please click here.

If you are hosting an in-person visit, almost nothing. We’ll ask you to have a call with your allocated journalist so they are well prepared for their visit. You are always welcome to introduce the topic to your students beforehand, but this is not a prerequisite.  

When you are hosting the journalist,  we ask that you provide the following: 

• Enough time for our 90-minute workshop; 

• Classroom equipment: a whiteboard, a projector and ideally an internet connection, though we can manage without as long as we know ahead of time; 

• Your presence in the classroom while the journalist is visiting. 

We organise visits in three main rounds each school year, coinciding with the main school holidays.
That means you can expect to host a journalist either just before the winter holidays, the spring holidays or the summer holidays. Once we receive your preferred dates, it usually takes a few weeks to confirm, as we carefully coordinate and allocate visits during that period.

Once your visit is confirmed, Lie Detectors will connect you with the journalist who will lead the session. Before the visit, the journalist will arrange a short planning call with you to discuss practical details and make sure the session fits your classroom’s needs. 

On the day of the visit (whether in person or via your preferred video conferencing platform), the journalist will deliver a 90-minute interactive session focused on fact-checking, digital media literacy, and professional journalism. The session combines short presentations with games, discussion, and plenty of opportunities for your students’ input. 

At the end of the session, students can ask any remaining questions and fill in a short feedback questionnaire. That feedback helps us continue improving our work. 

All journalists who take part in Lie Detectors sign our cooperation agreement that commits them to a non-partisan, courteous, and inclusive approach, tailored to the age group they work with. They also agree to clear standards of punctuality and consistent quality across all classroom visits. 

Before being invited to join, journalists are carefully vetted to ensure their independence from political or commercial interests. In addition, they subscribe to recognised ethical standards set out by the European Federation of Journalists and the Ethical Journalism Network.  

Each classroom visit includes a feedback system to gather responses from students, teachers and journalists. This ensures the equal delivery of classroom sessions, acts as a quality check on journalists, and allows Lie Detectors to draw and respond to important lessons from the ground.