Invitations for 2023

I was in a meeting yesterday with a wonderful future teacher who said that she worried that the rigor of college reading and writing about literature might suffocate what she loves most about English language arts: writing. Writing for expression. Writing to create. Writing for joy.

Of course, I thought of our Open Write and invited her write with us. I said, “You just show up to ethicalela.com on Saturday, and every or any or no day for the next five days. Then, you read the prompt and write or don’t write. But if you write, then, kind teachers will write back to you saying nice things that will make you happy. And then you can make other teachers happy by writing messages to them about their poetry. This will also make you happy.”

I don’t know if she will join us this month, but I hope she does. And I hope you do, too. It will make you happy.

The first Open Write of 2023 begins on Saturday, January 21st. Consider this your invitation to write some poetry in 2023. (That was the first invitation for 2023.)

And here is an invitation to host an Open Write. We have the Open Writes scheduled for February, March, and April, but if you are interested in hosting an Open Write during June 2023 to March 2024, sign up here. (That was the second invitation for 2023.)

And now for another invitation

Ethical ELA started in 2015 with my first blog post, Endings and Ethics, where I first pondered what ethics in ELA means. And that first year, 21K teachers found their way to my blog as I candidly considered how ethical my own practices were/were not. Years later, the blog does the ethical work a bit more rather than just talking about it. The space is more healing and humanizing because of the people writing with me — as it should be.

Now, we have about 100K views and 31K visitors each year with a lifetime of over half a million with our 669 posts (now 670). On any given day of the year, Ethical ELA welcomes 300 visitors, but on days that Ethical ELA publishes a new post or writing prompt, we can have over 1000 visitors.

As I have written about time and again, the numbers are a narrow form of measurement. The reach of the ideas in blog posts, comments, and poetry is beyond quantifying.

The reach is found when a classroom of sixth graders in Oklahoma sprawl across the carpeted classroom floor to do paint chip poetry ( a post from Kim Johnson in Georgia).

The reach is felt when a teacher in Oregon emails to learn more about imagining a no-grades approach.

The reach extends when a teacher in Florida sends a Facebook message with an update about how they are doing 9-weeks of choice reading.

Still, a number is tangible, and when Lisa Nassar wrote an anti-reading log blog post, it was clear her concerns resonated and continue to resonate with over ten thousand reads. (See the most read posts of all time in the table below.)

We realize that there are many English language arts blogs out there and many more education sites with lots more readership. This makes us happy — that people are making resources readily available to educators–but some sites are “for pay” or filled with ads. Ethical ELA, however, is not for profit; there are no ads; no one is selling or judging. We are here for teachers — teachers entrusted with the ELA lives of other people’s children who need accessible, affordable, humanizing, dignity-nurturing resources. We are here because we are human beings needing our own ELA lives to thrive in the process.

At the heart of Ethical ELA are three principles (that we are still striving to articulate):

1. Everyday ways of being that humanize: We strive for our everyday choices and interactions with human beings to be humanizing.
2. Living language arts: The words we use and don’t, privilege and marginalize, harm and heal– in interactions, texts, images, movement, sounds, places. We want to center the arts in English language arts, to create and engage students in creating.
3. Assessment as bearing witness: The ways we assign, monitor, assess students must also humanize — in the service of learning and nurturing meaningful ways of being and engaging in the world. To ask for and receive “work” from students is to bear witness to their lives. This is a privilege we hold dear.

So here is our call to you

We have this space. We have some great followers. You are one of them. Will you contribute to Ethical ELA?

If you have developed expertise or done a lot of thinking about something in particular in teaching English language arts that aligns with Ethical ELA’s still-evolving principles, we’d love for you to contribute to the lives of teachers who visit this space:

1. Write a column — a monthly or quarterly post on that subject to share with teachers;
2. Write series of book talks or book reviews on a variety of books on a similar topic; and/or
3. Write a single blog post about something that works well or didn’t work well but turned out to be important from your classroom.

And/or partner with a teacher-friend or student to collaborate on a column or blog post.

What might this look like

Blog posts can be 500-1000 words (or slightly more if needed) with video, images, and other artifacts. On a teacher site, we also want there to be headings so that a busy teacher can easily locate materials or key takeaways for them to use right away. We like stories, scenes from the classroom, and student examples. We appreciate candid narration, truths, vulnerability. (See the most-read posts above.)

Here are suggestions for ways to build a series or single blog posts:

1. Your story of coming to care about this topic or problem of practice. Perhaps the books, teachers, experiences that helped you get started with your inquiry or problem solving.
2. Create a post with some background reading, grounding teachers on the key authors or details or terms in this area that could inform practice.
3. Show how this lives in your classroom or practice with teachers. Perhaps a narrative scene. Maybe a how-to. Some artifacts or examples of your materials and/or student examples (with their permission).
4. Maybe another variation or example or lesson to try in the classroom with suggestions for modifications for different grade levels.
5. Then, maybe a follow-up post a month or so later hearing how Ethical ELA teacher used it or tried it in their classroom.

Next steps

If you like the ideas of a column, our preference would be for you to have the 3 or 4 posts done at the same time so that our editors can format and schedule the blog posts at once– a week or month apart. This minimizes the need for multiple emails and reminders week-to-week or month-to-month. It also makes more efficient the labor of running the blog, which, again, is nonprofit. Nobody is paid. All volunteer in the service of teachers.

If you are proposing a blog post, just send it any time.

You could also email Sarah, Ethical ELA, to do some brainstorming or co-writing. Email her at sarah.j.donovan@gmail.com or fill out this form below.

And that was the third invitation for 2023. We hope you will accept all — 1) Write with us during the January Open Write; 2) Host an Open Write day in 2023-2024; 3) Contribute a blog post or column to Ethical ELA — or one, or two. But if not, no judgments here. We always say that anything you do with or for Ethical ELA must serve you and never be burdensome. Your wellbeing and joy comes first.