Education Leaders, Contribute Your Voice to Share Shifts in Practice

For years, through GOA’s blog, we have informally welcomed guest authors and bloggers, instructional leaders who have shared with us best practices in the design of the learning experiences for and with students. We want to share your voice. Why? Because we believe that some of the best professional learning and development can come from instructional leaders sharing what is working with educators.

Recent guest blogs include Using a See, Think, Me, We Framework to Facilitate Making Connections and How to Design Assessments that Support Student Activism. We also are now formally inviting guest blogs by instructional leaders from schools we work with in professional learning and from educators who wish to share their practice with us and a broader audience.

Blogging is an essential element of our work at GOA. GOA’s blog has been a part of our organization for over eight years, and our blogs have collectively garnered hundreds of thousands of pageviews. Our audience primarily consists of educators at independent, international, public, and charter schools. Our audience is also global.

We publish content that is related to GOA’s mission and core competencies. Popular content includes practical and applicable strategies that are useful or helpful for a classroom or school. Topics on our blog include:

• Student-centered learning and building student voice, choice, and agency

• Meaningful and relevant projects, content, and problems

• Rethinking the role and design of assessments

• Competency-based and mastery-based learning approaches

• Technology and the role technology may play in the design of learning experiences to build core competencies for success in college, career, and citizenship

• Professional learning

• Leadership

To get a sense of what attracts the most visitors to GOA’s blog, here are the top ten posts from 2023 and 2022.

I want to write a blog post! What do I need to know?

At GOA, we are committed to sharing practical strategies that create shifts in educator practice. Our Shifts in Practice series seeks to elevate voices by featuring your insights and ideas. We welcome blog contributions from school and instructional leaders.

When writing, imagine your audience as educators seeking stories, strategies, and practical advice they need to put new ideas into practice.

Are you interested in submitting an article for potential publication as part of our Shifts in Practice series? If so, please read below and follow the directions.

Blog Do’s

Do have a focused, singular thesis statement or core idea that drives your blog post. For better or for worse, people click on blog posts because of the title and/or the takeaway it promises. As you write or proofread, think to yourself: “If I had to compose a tweet about what this blog post is about, what would that tweet say?” or “What single idea or sentence from this blog post would make the best title, the title that I would want to see shared widely?”

Do follow a typical blog structure. This might include a short story or anecdote; a section of practical, tangible ideas and advice for educators; a list of resources; your thoughts and ideas about how to implement a new innovation or tackle a challenge in your classroom or school. If you peruse our list of blog posts, you’ll find most of our posts have titles that start with “How to…” or “X Ways to…”; and, a concluding call to action: what might the reader take away from your piece and what do you want them to do next?

Do make sure you have proofread your blog before sharing it with us.

Do keep your blog to typical blog length: approximately 800 to 1200 words.

Do focus on relevant, practical applications of your topic. Our most popular blog posts are the ones that offer educators new ideas in practical form: they leave these posts knowing what an idea is, why it matters, and — critically — how it might apply to their jobs, goals, and values.

Do include links to research, resources, and/or ideas that align with your content. Do not footnote. When you mention a school or learning organization by name, link to it.

Do keep audience needs in mind. There’s so much content on the web. How does your article support what others might need? What differentiates your experience? What are you offering that is new or innovative? What might help others who read the post? Have empathy for your reader and think through what they might want or need.

Do remember: People spend fewer than two minutes on a website (industry average). Organize your blog in such a way that it is easy to scan. Include bullets, headers, and lists. Check some of GOA’s existing blogs for inspiration.

Do include original images which can make a great blog even better. This can include photos, infographics, sketchnotes, or videos to embed. Please include images that help tell the story of your content. Images also help with sharing on social media.

Do share your drafts with colleagues before you submit to an editor. It’s often a really useful part of the process to have another person read your draft not as an editor, but as a potential blog reader. Get feedback and reactions as part of the pre-editing process.

We reserve the right not to publish your blog.

Who manages the blog?

We have two individuals at GOA who are the blog’s editors. You’ll work on blog posts with one of them. They will coach you through refining your ideas, they edit your post, and they publish it on the blog listing your name as the author.

Who writes for the blog?

The blog is a community platform. We invite GOA students, teachers, and leaders to be guest bloggers.

How do I submit my blog?

Send your draft to hello@globalonlineacademy.org. Please include: a Google Doc link or similar of your blog, any original images, your headshot, and a one-sentence bio. Please also send us your link to your Twitter handle, if you have one.

We do not accept promotional material.

May I repost an article from GOA’s blog on another site?

Yes, you may. We require that you include a line at the top of the repost that indicates that the article originally was published on GOA’s blog with the date with a link to the original publication. (i.e. This article was originally posted July 4, 2021 on GOA’s Insights blog).

This post is part of our Shifts in Practice series, which features educator voices from GOA’s network and seeks to share practical strategies that create shifts in educator practice. Are you an educator interested in submitting an article for potential publication on our Insights blog? If so, please read Educators: Contribute Your Voice to Share Shifts in Practice and follow the directions. We look forward to featuring your voice, insights, and ideas.

GOA serves students, teachers, and leaders and is comprised of member schools from around the world, including independent, international, charter, and public schools. Learn more about Becoming a Member. Our professional learning opportunities are open to any educator or school team. Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. To stay up to date on GOA learning opportunities, sign up for our newsletter.