Writers' Guidelines

Sections

• Purpose
• Remuneration
• Length
• Format
• Article Proposals and Submissions
• Editing
• Style and Approach
• Writing Tips
• Note About You, the Author
• Illustrations/photographs
• References & Resource Lists

Purpose

Green Teacher magazine is intended to help teachers, parents and other educators promote environmental and global awareness among young people from kindergarten through senior high school. Articles range from perspective pieces (e.g., the role of environmental education or global education in the curriculum) to practical classroom-ready activities. Most articles are written by teachers or other educators working in the fields of environmental or global education, but we occasionally publish pieces by freelance writers and we welcome such contributions.

Remuneration

Green Teacher is a non-profit organization, and those who write for the magazine do so on an unpaid, volunteer basis. Writers of articles receive five copies of the issue in which their article appears and a one-year subscription to the magazine.

Length

Most issues of Green Teacher contain several articles of short or moderate length rather than a few long ones. The length of the article will be determined by its content, but a good target is 1500-3500 words.

Format in which to send proposals and articles (in order of preference):

a) send your proposal and article by email to tim@greenteacher.com. If you are sending the article as an attachment, please send it as a Microsoft Word file or save it in a generic format such as rich text (rtf) or text (txt). If possible, please remove all tabs, indents, font changes and other formatting codes from your file, as this will save us time later.
b) send the article on a disk (PC-formatted floppy, CD, or zip disk). Send a hard copy of your article along with the disk.
c) fax your article to (416) 925-3474 and follow it up by mailing us a disk and a printed copy.

Article Proposals and Submissions

If you have an idea for an article, we advise you to send us a one-page summary or outline before you begin to write the article. We will read it and let you know whether or not we think such a piece might be suitable for Green Teacher and, if so, how it might best be tailored to our readers’ needs and interests. Please note that an expression of interest in your proposed article is an indication that we think your idea has promise, but it is not a guarantee that the article will be published. We will try to respond to your proposal within a few weeks. If your outline or proposal looks promising, we will set a date for you to send us the finished piece.When we receive your finished article, we will determine whether it is:
a) publishable as is;
b) publishable if revisions are made; or
c) not publishable (this can happen if the article doesn’t actually cover what the outline promised
or is too poorly written for publication).

Editing

Once we accept your article for publication, we will contact you if we need clarification or elaboration. Our acceptance of an article is frequently conditional upon certain revisions being made. In this case, we will contact you to discuss the revisions and, assuming that you are willing to make them, we will negotiate a reasonable deadline. We reserve the right to edit all material for brevity, organization, clarity and grammatical precision. Unless our changes are very minor, we will send you a final edited version before we begin page layout. Further minor editing may be done during the production stage if page layout requires a reduction in length. Although we hope that you will not insist upon being consulted about every word change, we will understand if you do. Please inform us if that’s the case.

Style and Approach

If you are writing about a program or series of activities undertaken in your school, try to avoid the “diary” approach. Readers do not need to know every little thing that happened or names of all the players. For the most part, they are reading for ideas that they can borrow and build on in their own classrooms. You may want to include an account of what worked and what didn’t work when you tried a particular teaching unit or activity, but your main purpose should be to inform readers how they might go about developing a similar program, unit or activity.

If you are writing on a topic related to the environment or other global issues, such as climate change or ozone depletion, your primary purpose should not be to inform readers about these issues but rather to provide ideas for teaching about these issues. Some background information is always useful, but most teachers have many other sources for such information. They look to Green Teacher to find ways of conveying the complexity of these issues to students. Keep in mind that Green Teacher is not an academic journal and, as such, tends to be less formal than academic texts. Write clearly and straightforwardly and avoid jargon, but don’t hesitate to use humor or to introduce personal reflections if your subject calls for these. Since Green Teacher readers are located all over the world, try to avoid references to a particular region, province or state if such references are not important to your article.

Writing Tips

• Please pay attention to the quality of your writing. Organize your ideas logically. Provide transitions as you move from one idea to the next. Use your best sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation. Have an honest friend or colleague read and critique your manuscript before you submit it
• Avoid overused words and phrases such as “in terms of,” “empowerment,” “we can make a difference,” “in this fast-paced, technological modern world of ours...”.
  
• Avoid verbosity, as in “It was unanimously agreed by all who participated and were involved in this exciting event that the students had been empowered to really make a difference in terms of
  helping Mother Nature and saving the environment.”

Note about you, the author

 Please add a sentence about yourself which we can add to the end or your article or review. Our typical credit line goes something like the following: “Mary Segatti teaches Grade 3 at Maple Point Elementary School in Ottawa, Ontario” or “John Franklin is the education director of the Maple Bud Foundation in Peoria, Illinois.”

Illustrations/Photographs

 If possible, please send a selection of 8-10 photographs or drawings to illustrate your article. If you need to take new photos and are using a non-digital camera, we will pay for your film, developing and postage. If you are taking digital photos, please note that a minimum resolution of 300 pixels per inch (ppi) is required for printing. For example, a photo that will be printed as a 4" by 3" image will
need to be at least 1200 pixels by 900 pixels (each dimension multiplied by 300 pixels). This is a much higher resolution than is needed for images that are intended to be viewed on a computer screen. To obtain the best quality possible, adjust the image settings on your camera to “high quality” or “high resolution.” Save the photos as JPGs or TIFs and email them to us or send them on a CD. If you have trouble emailing them all at once, try sending them one at a time. If you already have digital photos but don’t know if they are good enough for printing, check the size of each file. High resolution color images that are big enough to print are usually at least 300 kb. For each photo, please provide a caption that describes the subject and/or action in the picture. Similarly, provide the name(s) of the photographer(s) so that credit can be given. All slides, drawings, photos will be returned to you in good condition after the issue is published.

 References & Resource Lists

If you quote, paraphrase or otherwise cite other texts in your article, you must credit the author in a footnote that includes: author, title, place of publication, publisher, date, and page number(s) where you found the quote or the idea that you are citing. If citing a journal or periodical, provide the titles of both the journal and the article, as well as the date, volume, issue and page numbers. If citing material found on a website, please provide the names of the sponsoring organization and the author (if known), the title of the article, the complete website address, and the date that you accessed the information.

Resource Lists: If you are recommending teaching resources or references for further reading, please include a complete bibliographic citation of these. This includes the title, author, publisher, date and place of publication, the number of pages, the ISBN number, and contact information for the publisher or distributor. You will usually find all of this information on the inside overleaf of the book. The aim is to give all of the information that interested readers will need to obtain their own copies of the resources.

If you are interested in writing an article and have questions that are not answered above, please contact us. We look forward to hearing your ideas.

For more information, contact our office or e-mail