Help & Support

Guidelines for authors of articles

The following guidelines are just that — guidelines. They are intended to help you as you write your article for publication on LEARN NC, but they are not meant to be restrictive. We are happy to make exceptions as appropriate, so please contact us with any questions or concerns you have!

Content

We publish primarily articles that provide clear, innovative, and successful instructional strategies and educational practices. What do we mean by this?

Instructional strategies and educational practices

  • Instructional strategies are specific things you do in your classroom to facilitate student learning — for example, ways to help students develop reading comprehension skills or how to structure a kindergarten curriculum around nature study. Instructional strategies usually apply to specific grade levels and curriculum areas.
  • Educational practices are broader in scope and more integral to the way a teacher teaches. Articles about educational practices are of potential value to all teachers, regardless of grade level or curriculum area. Examples include how to organize your classroom to support your instructional goals or how to make a personal connection with at-risk students.
  • Of course, there may be some overlap! Articles about instructional strategies may include ideas that teachers could apply more broadly, and your perspective on educational practice will be determined by the grade level or subject area you teach.

Innovative and successful

  • By innovative we mean simply that the strategy or practice is not in common use. In the case of an instructional strategy, you should either have developed this way of teaching on your own or with colleagues or have made important modifications to it, and you should be able to explain it in a unique and personal way. For educational practices, the standard is a bit lower: even if half the teachers in North Carolina teach a certain way, the other half can still benefit from reading about it, and even the most experienced veterans may benefit from reading your personal perspective on it.
  • By successful we mean that you can provide some kind of evidence that your strategy or practice does what it is intended to do. We don't expect data with mathematical analysis (although that would be fine, of course!) — anecdotes and summaries of your experience are fine. But you should be able to answer the question, “How do you know this works?”

Some things to avoid

Editorializing. We all have causes we believe in and feel strongly about — if we didn't, we wouldn't be good teachers. But this isn't the place for a sermon. Don't preach about the importance of reaching all of your students — show your readers how to do it. If you believe that teachers should do more to integrate technology, give them examples of specific tools to enrich instruction and teach them how to use them. If you do that job well, your readers won't need the editorial.

Overly personal accounts. Your article certainly should reflect your personal experience in the classroom, but be brief about your feelings. We know you love teaching and “touching the future”! So do your readers, and true enough, sometimes they need the pep talk. But you can serve them better here by explaining your ideas and helping them to teach more effectively.

Style

Articles should be written in a clear, informal style — not academic, but not chatty, either. If you are writing about a teaching strategy you have personally developed or implemented or about a personal experience, you should write your article in the first person. In general we do not use footnotes or endnotes, but if you have used sources for research that require citation, provide the author, full title, publisher and year of publication (or URL and date accessed for Web references), and page number if applicable.

Other types of articles may be written in a style appropriate to them. Summaries of research may be written in a more formal, academic style, but should in all cases be written with an audience of practicing K–12 teachers in mind.

Instructional writing

Remember that you are teaching through your article, not just sharing experiences. Your goal is to help other teachers do what you do. Explain both what you do and why you do it in as much detail as you can. Don't worry about saying too much — we can always edit it down later.

Treat your readers as professionals and colleagues, but don't assume that they know everything you know — if they did, they wouldn't need your article! Imagine a beginning teacher, perhaps even a lateral-entry teacher who has never taught before. What would that person need to know about what you do in order to try it herself or himself? At the same time, remember that experienced teachers will be reading your article as well, and will be able to learn from you — your experience will be different from theirs.

Editing

We understand that teachers are not professional writers. You may feel that your writing skills are inadequate to the task. In nearly every case, though, we can work with you to bring your ideas to the Web, in your voice. We are happy to edit as much or as little as needed, and edits are subject to the author's approval prior to publication. We can also work with you to develop your ideas and help you find the right tone in your writing.

Length

Articles should be between 1500 and 2500 words. (Occasionally we publish series of articles by a single teacher, but please discuss this with the Editorial Director before embarking on such a project!) Be concise, but take the time you need to cover your topic. If people are interested in the topic, they'll keep reading.

Submitting your article

Please follow these guidelines in submitting your article. If you do not, we may not be able to consider it for publication.

  • Do submit your article via email in rich text (.rtf), Microsoft Word (.doc), or AppleWorks (.cwk) format.
  • Do not use multiple fonts, colors, font sizes, etc., in your article; we will format all articles to a consistent model for publication.
  • Do not embed hyperlinks or images into Word documents or other files. We cannot easily extract such information from Word documents and will return submissions that include them. Type out URLs in brackets after the text you mean to link, and send images as separate files.

Images

Photographs and other images should be sent separately as JPEG (.jpg) or TIFF (.tif) files. Do not paste them into Word documents or other files; we cannot usefully extract them. When in doubt, photographs should be saved at the highest resolution possible and at full size; we can shrink and crop images as necessary.

Please provide captions and credits that explain what each image is, identify all individuals shown (unless they are students, in which case don't use their names), and give credit to the photographer and/or the creator of the work displayed. If you are unable to send images in digital format, you may mail us the originals to be scanned, but please call or email to let us know that they are coming, and please include a return address so that we can send them back to you.

If you wish to include images that are not original, you must obtain permission from the photographer, artist, or creator. If you are including student work or a photograph that shows anyone under the age of 18, you must obtain permission from the parents of each child involved.

Student work, handouts, and other related materials

We encourage the submission of sample student work that illustrates a teaching strategy. Please include a permission form for each student when submitting schoolwork for publication. Student work may be submitted in digital or print format.

We also encourage you to send examples of handouts, spreadsheets, tests, parent letters, and other materials related to your article, whether intended for use by teachers or by students. We prefer that these materials be sent electronically (please contact us for specifics), but we may be able to work from printed documents. We will re-format these documents in a manner consistent with our other publications and subject to your approval.

Protecting student privacy

In addition to obtaining parent permission for the use of student work or of photographs of students, please do not use students' names in your article. If you wish to refer to a specific student, please use a fictitious name, and include a note to the editor that you have changed the names of students in the article.

Resources for authors

Contact information

With questions and submissions, please contact David Walbert, Editorial Director, via this website. LEARN NC may be reached by mail at 140 Friday Center Drive, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27517.

Last updated February 15, 2007