Thank you!
First of all, I want to thank you for your interest in writing an article to be featured on So You Want To Teach? As you may or may not know, SYWTT has been on the scene (at the current site) since June 2007, with articles dating back to February 2007. As of July 1, 2010, the blog has approximately:

1,400 RSS subscribers
1,500 Twitter Followers
300 Facebook Fans

All this is to say that your article will potentially reach in excess of 2,000 educators, many of whom do not generally read your content. So with all of that out of the way, what kinds of things am I looking for?

Bio
Your bio will be at the beginning of the article and will look something like this:

Joel is a band director from Texas who is about to begin his 9th year as a professional educator. He writes about teaching at SoYouWantToTeach.com. Follow him on Twitter at @sywtt or become a Facebook fan.

I’m really not all that concerned with how many links you include or how much information, as long as you’re linking to legit sites.

Gravatar
The icon at the top of each article is based on your email address. If you have not yet set up a Gravatar, it will display the dreaded generic Question Mark icon , and nobody wants that! So hop on over and set it up at your convenience. www.gravatar.com

Graphic
Each article on the blog has an accompanying image. If you want to include a specific one (please ensure copyright permission), feel free. Otherwise, I will find one from stock.xchng’s amazing assortment of royalty free images.

Length
The article can be as long as you feel is appropriate. If you want to break longer articles up into smaller chunks, that’s fine. Or just send one big huge thing. It would be nice if it’s at least two paragraphs. :)

Suggested Topics

• Classroom management
• Solving problems for first-year teachers
• Blogging
• Personal development
• Organization
• What were you least prepared for this year?
• What were you most prepared for this year?
• What were some of the biggest surprises this year; things that you never guessed might happen based on your student teaching experience?
• What advice would you give to students enrolled in teacher preparation courses
• Lists of technology resources

Examples
You can view all previous guest articles from this site here: Guest Bloggers

Logging in
Click here to access the site. If you already received an email notification saying that I created a username and password for you, I would suggest changing your password when you get a chance. Otherwise, click on “Register” and create your account. From here, you should be able to see all of the articles on the blog as well as the option to add a new post and edit any that you have created. Feel free to edit any of the articles you may have already written, as well as write others and submit them for review.

Feel free to email me if you have any further questions.

CURRENTLY
I plan on running a series of articles in August as teachers prepare for the school year. Anyone is welcome to participate! The basic premise is:

This August, I want to feature an article each weekday by some of the best education bloggers on So You Want To Teach? in a series entitled ”This Year Will Be The Best School Year Ever“. I am being intentionally vague in the scope of the project because I know that you have developed a certain writing style that works best for you. I want you to write in your own voice and do what works for you.

This really not for self-promotion from either end of the deal, though there may be some overall hype generated by the project. The goal is primarily to help some of the newer teachers (or those who are on course to go through their second, third, or fifteenth FIRST year all over again).

I had someone tell me that this would be difficult because this past school year was pretty horrid. That’s okay, it happens. So maybe if that’s the case, go more toward the realm of “This year will be way better than last because…”

My blog is full of tips, but I’m looking more for a fire-igniting, ”I’ve had it” moment, passion-riveting kind of thing. Not really a pep talk though, as I firmly believe extrinsic motivation is useless over the long term.