Green Teacher
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 field of environmental/global education, but we have also published several pieces by freelance writers and we welcome such contributions.As a small non-profit publication, we are unable to offer payment to writers and reviewers. Writers of feature articles receive five copies of the issue in which their article appears.
As a general rule, the length of the article will be determined by its content. One page in Green Teacher is approximately 750 words. With photographs or illustrations, one page comes to about 575 words. We find that most readers simply do not have time to read very long articles, and thus a good target is approximately 1500 words. Maximum length should be 2500 words.
In descending order of preference:
We are a small magazine with an editorial/production/circulation staff of only two . Therefore, we usually cannot respond immediately to articles sent unsolicited. However, if we think your article is one we might publish at a future date, we will try to contact you within a month from the time we receive it. If you have an idea for an article and would like to know whether or not we would be interested, please send an outline or summary of the proposed article (keep it to about one page in length). Our deadlines for submission of articles are as follows:
February 15 - Summer issue (publication in June)
April 15 - Fall issue (publication in September)
August 15 - Winter issue (publication in December)
November 15 - Spring issue (publication in March of the following year)
When you submit an article or activity, please let us know if you have or will be submitting it to our publications. If you have agreed to write an article and have met the assigned deadline in good faith, do not be puzzled or dismayed if you don't hear from us right away. Around our deadlines we typically receive more than a dozen articles and up to ten book reviews all at once, and it takes us time to read and consider each of them carefully. Making matters even more hectic, we may also be in the last stages of production on the current issue. It may therefore be a few weeks before we contact you. When we do, we will usually recommend changes or additions and then negotiate a reasonable time for you to make these revisions. We recognize that this process can be frustrating to writers wanting immediate feedback, but we will greatly appreciate your patience!
Once we accept the article for publication, we will contact you if we need clarification or elaboration. Green Teacher reserves the right to edit all material for brevity, organization, clarity and grammatical precision. Unless our changes are very minor, we will fax 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 is an individual matter which we cannot dictate, but some guidelines are in order. First, bear in mind that Green Teacher is not an academic journal and, as such, does not stand on formality. Let your own voice be heard in your writing, and don't hesitate to use humour and rhetorical flair. Since our readership extends across Canada and the United States, try to avoid references to a particular region, province or state if they are not important to your article.
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 (and likely do not want) to know every little thing that happened. For the most part, they are reading for ideas that they can use or build on in their own classrooms. While you may want or need to include an account of what happened when you tried a particular teaching unit or activity, your main purpose should be to inform readers of how they might best go about developing a similar program, unit or activity.
If you are writing on a topic related to the environment or to other global issues, such as global warming 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.
Finally, please note that we try to avoid articles that promote the work of one organization
If possible, please send a selection of drawings or photographs to illustrate your article. We will pay the expense of purchasing and developing a roll of film if you do not already have photographs. Black and white glossy prints are ideal for reproduction, but we can also use colour prints which have good contrast. Slides are the least desirable but are acceptable if, like colour prints, they show good light/dark contrast and avoid shadows on people's faces. Please provide a description of each photograph so that the captions printed in the magazine accurately reflect the action in the picture. Similarly, please provide the name(s) of the photographer(s) so that proper credit can be given. All slides, drawings, photos will be returned to you in good condition after the issue is published.
If you use references when writing your article, or if you are recommending resources or references for further reading, please include a complete bibliographic citation of these. Let us know the title, author, publisher, date and place of publication, number of pages, and ISBN number. You'll generally find all of this information on the inside overleaf of the book. If citing a journal or periodical, provide the title of the journal and article, author, date, volume, issue and page numbers. If some of this information is impossible for you to obtain, let us know and we will try to find the source.
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