One of the challenges to getting teachers’ voices heard by the public is finding media outlets that will support this. But there are a number of solutions to this — and we hope that learning about some of them will help teachers to begin speaking up and telling the world about our important work.

• Teachers can use Patch to share their point of view. Patch.com is an online newspaper that has separate websites for many local communities around the country. Anyone can set up a blog on their local site. Check at Patch.com to see if your community has a site. Since we’re in Evanston IL, our blog is at http://evanston.patch.com . Go there now to see the latest wonderful classroom story written by special education teacher Ilyse Brainin.
• Most local newspapers have online versions, and some welcome reader-bloggers. We found, for instance, that online news sources in Birmingham AL do this, and the Birmingham News is even seeking an education blogger now. You can use a blog to share your own stories — or gather pieces from fellow teachers and post them (with the writers’ permissions, of course).
• In some communities teachers may be able to arrange regular education feature columns in their local newspapers. This is what the Western Massachusetts Writing Project has done. Here are some examples that we have featured on our “Teachers Writing for Support” page of this website.

So now, readers, you have one less excuse not to do this writing!