Voices of NYSEC Blog Post Themes/Topics for 2025

Thank you for considering our blog for your writing. We welcome any topics that our membership and contributors feel moved to share. The goal of this blog is to feature educator/student/school community members’ stories and voices. The list below is flexible. We are open to topics and suggestions that do not appear on the list, however, the list includes topics in which our members have expressed interest.

We welcome your suggestions and ideas. We welcome interviews and student writing, too. Feel free to reach out to our Voices of NYSEC blog editor, Holly Spinelli: hspinelli@nysecteach.org

We look forward to reading your contributions.

General Topics Accepted Year-Round:

Antiracism and Anti-bias Pedagogy
This can include lessons, texts, reflections.

Artificial Intelligence/ChatGPT
How are you (or your school/community) approaching it in classrooms?

Book Banter
What book do you feel passionate about sharing with others? Is it a new title? One you’ve read/re-read? Share a bit about it. What was your experience like as you read it? What do you want others to know about it? Why should they read it? Who is the best audience for it? Book Banter pieces usually range from 100- 350 words in length. Click here to see an example of a Book Banter post.

NOTE: There may be a separate “Book Banter” section on our publications section of our website. If this is created, Book Banter submissions will be published on that specific page of the NYSEC website. If not, the Book Banter submission will be published on the Voices of NYSEC blog page. Authors will be informed about the publications page(s) upon which their work will appear prior to NYSEC publishing their piece.

Censorship/The Freedom to Read
What’s happening with book challenges? Curriculum changes/challenges? How are you/your colleagues/your students responding?

Collaboration
Have you collaborated with your librarians, other educators, community members, authors, or others? We’d love for you to share your experience!

Literacy/Reading/Writing Instruction
Are you trying new approaches? Are you sticking with what’s best for your students? Are you feeling lost and looking to share some of your experiences?

Personal Goals and Victories
Think Joy! What have you/your colleagues/your school community/your students achieved? How did they get there? What was your journey like? We’d LOVE to celebrate with you!

Reflections
Consider when your teaching/classroom/colleague experience wasn’t so great. Think about when it was awesome! What did you learn? Where do you go from here?

Student Voices
We encourage you to invite your students to share their educational experiences, especially with reading and writing! What are their thoughts on book bans? Do they have a book they’d love to write about? Do they have poetry or short stories they’d like to share with a wider audience? We are eager to hear from them!

The Teacher Shortage
Do you have any experience with this where you’re teaching? We’d like to hear about it from your perspective.

Blog Submission Guidelines:

Word Count:
Blog posts tend to be anywhere from 650-850 words. Of course, we will use discretion and allow for posts that are slightly longer than 850 words, too. If you wish to turn a blog post into a longer piece, we encourage you to consider submitting your writing to our journal, The English Record. If you wish to publish something shorter, in a creative writing format, or a piece that can be published in a quarterly time frame, then we encourage you to submit to our NYSEC Newsletter.

Timelines:
Blog posts are often published twice a month– usually the first and 3rd weeks of the month. We ask for you to submit your work at least 4 weeks prior to publication.

Editing Process:
The editing process is mostly asynchronous. We read and leave comments, questions, and suggestions in the margins of your work. We ask for writers to submit their work via a Google Doc with editing/commenting permission. We can accept a Microsoft Word document, but Google Docs is preferred. We can schedule a phone call or a Zoom meeting to discuss your piece if necessary. These conversations are designed to be an avenue for us to help you achieve your goals for your writing. We want to support your work and your writing process.

Photos:
If you wish to include photos or images with your blog post, please send them as separate jpeg files. Please do not embed them in the blog post itself.

Short Bio:
If your submission is accepted, we ask that you send along a short bio with any information about yourself that you wish to share with readers. Please note, the Voices of NYSEC blog is open access for the general public to view and read. If you wish to remain anonymous, you are welcome to write under a pseudonym or to keep your information in your bio as general/nondescript as you wish.

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Book Banter: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng • Michelle Bulla • November 2024

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