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-Filters withing our society, how teenagers today have a lot of pressures on them due to the fact that judging others and putting filters over someone are more common
-How can we solve this: educating teenagers on roles in society and how the things we say and or do can really hurt someone.
-Educating teenagers on how to see through these "filters"

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Link to Article for First Editorial Idea

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Link to Article for First Editorial Idea

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ollycoddled and cosseted or stressed and over-pressured. Energised and engaged or bored and turned off. Young people have so many labels and stereotypes slapped on them it's a wonder these are not visible on their endless selfies. What is undeniably true is that the evidence suggests that rates of depression, self-harm and anxiety among young people are at unprecedented levels.

Youth unemployment is more than 13%, the cost of higher education is rapidly rising, a drought of affordable housing coupled with low pay is keeping many young people sealed under the parental roof and trapped in what one report called " suspended adulthood ". The ubiquity of the internet and social media, with its dark underbelly of hardcore pornography, body shaming and cyberbullying, is encroaching on their wellbeing, while a relentless focus on academic high-achieving is turning up the pressure in the classroom. Youth, traditionally thought of as the most enviable time of life, can now look like a deeply challenging and sometimes unpleasant time of life.

But is the experience of adolescence - defined as the period after childhood, from puberty to maturity - any tougher now than it was for previous generations? And when does it stop, given that some experts argue that full intellectual maturity is reached at the age of 27.

Among the events planned for World Mental Health Day, an exhibition by a small but successful charity in London aims to unpick some of the issues around the "lived experience of adolescent development". Open Door has helped thousands of young people with therapy and support with problems including depression, anxiety, self-harm, drug and alcohol misuse, eating disorders, psychosis, sexuality and gender identity issues since it opened in 1976.

The exhibition, Adolescence Then and Now, marks the charity's 40th anniversary, and director Julia Britton, one of the capital's leading consultant child and adolescent psychotherapists, says demand for its services is greater than ever. "We are operating with a constant waiting list of around 100, we can't even meet local demand. Parts of the country have nothing at all for young people with mental illness. The lack of provision is a huge issue for now, and a huge issue being stored up for the future."

She says many of the issues facing young people have not changed. "I look at myself as a teenager in the 1970s and so many issues were around: teen pregnancies, drug and alcohol misuse, psychotic breakdowns, financial and identity pressures. But there are many differences, too. The context certainly is different. I think there are far more pressures educationally, more sense that it's all hinged on one exam, and certainly teachers are hugely concerned about the mental distress they are seeing. Then there's cyberbullying where you can't switch off and you can't get away. Pornography, a normal part of development, is now very far removed from Playboy. A lot of young people are disturbed by what they see online.

"The internet is both helpful and not. If young people type in 'self-harm', they can either go to a Young Minds website where they will be offered help and support, or to a destructive group which is discussing how to self-harm and hide eating disorders. So it's good and bad," she says.

The sense of a struggling generation has undoubtedly taken on new dimensions. Last week a poll by the charity Young Women's Trust found that "suspended adulthood" was affecting the mental health of one in three 18-to-30-year-olds who felt worried about the future and under financial pressures due to low pay and lack of work or opportunities. More than half of the 4,000 surveyed were having to live at home with their parents.

"Make no mistake,"says Dr Carole Easton, chief executive of the charity, "we're talking about a generation of young people in crisis. It is not in any of our interests to write off an entire generation."

Abena is 18. A former mental health service user at Open Door, she interviewed artist Grayson Perry in a video project for the coming exhibition. They discussed the contrasts in their teenage experiences. He told her: "My family was quite screwed up, it was quite a volatile household and quite scary." In 1976 Perry was 16 and had already been thrown out of his home by his stepmother over his transvestism: "When I was that age you hung out on the village green and got bored with others. I had low impulse control, I was incredibly angry until I went into therapy."

What most struck Abena, she says, was that, while his cross-dressing was a major taboo and so a pressure point for him as a teenager, "he doesn't remember having any issues over his body image at all. He doesn't remember having a conversation about body image. But he remembers trying to keep his dressing-up from his parents and how everybody thought transvestism was very strange and taboo. That identity didn't exist.

"Now I think that would be far more acceptable and people would be quite relaxed about that. But I feel like there are very real pressures around body image now that he didn't have. Having social media now, it's real pressure around how you look, making sure every picture is perfect," she says.

"So the pressure he had then isn't what we have now, but we have other ones. And it all depends on where you go in the world. I'm a black woman, but that would be a very different issue if I was living in America, for example. As a young person now I don't drink very much, but I'm going to university where there is a real culture of drinking heavily and I find that really daunting. I'll be in a minority, and being in a minority can be very uncomfortable," says Abena. "I don't think I'd have gotten through my bad times, to be honest, if I hadn't been able to access Open Door. I don't know how I'd have coped on my own. All the worries I had which felt too big to say to teachers or even my family, I was able to say there. It felt like home."

Leigh Wildman, a therapist and support worker for young people with special needs, is 54. "I often wonder about whether I'd be on computer games if I'd been a teenager now instead of climbing trees, kicking a tin can down the road and making camps as we did then. Then later on there was music, of course, counter-culture music and art which rescued me. I left school at 15, but in those days you could go round the industrial estate and get a job and I did lots of jobs before taking off hitchhiking round Europe when I was 18," she says.

"My mum was pleased, but I feel young people today are much more fearful. They stay at school longer, at home longer, and the world looks very daunting. They have to knuckle down at school and there's no space to be light-hearted or to drift a little, to find out who they are, what kind of people they like. I had time for that, and I'm very glad I did," adds Wildman.

Another teenager, a client at Open Door, is Elena, 17. She says all her friends at school suffer panic attacks and anxiety: "If you drop grades a bit, you feel a failure, you feel the teachers immediately ignore you for the people who are high achievers.

"It's like you have to be this robot. I think it's harder now in terms of all the pressures to look a certain way and keep up with everything, and I think it's harder in terms of trying to speak to your parents or people at school who are not trained because when they were growing up mental health was not something anyone spoke about."

And she adds: " I'd cry in the classroom a lot at school, but teachers would just be a bit uncomfortable and you'd not want to open up. I'd just say I was having a bad day. I feel a lot more hope for the future now than I used to. I never used to think there was a future for me."
Television
1976 Around 93% of homes own a television. 2016 Young people spend more time online than watching TV.
Pop scandals
1976: Sex Pistols prompt a media storm by swearing live on Bill Grundy's TV show.

2016 Kanye West faces a backlash after calling Taylor Swift a bitch in a song lyric.
University
1976 Around 14% of people go to university. 2016 Around 40% of England's school-leavers go to university.
Youth unemployment
1976 9.1% of UK men and 8% of UK females aged under 20 are out of work. 2016 13.6% of UK 16-24-year-olds are unemployed.

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It's never been easy being a teenager. But is this now a generation in crisis?

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ollycoddled and cosseted or stressed and over-pressured. Energised and engaged or bored and turned off. Young people have so many labels and stereotypes slapped on them it's a wonder these are not visible on their endless selfies. What is undeniably true is that the evidence suggests that rates of depression, self-harm and anxiety among young people are at unprecedented levels.

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- those who do well in school and those who do poorly in school
- those who have been judged and those who judge
- high school "populars" and high school "un-populars"
- those who's upbringing was rough and those who had a good upbringing
- those who truly enjoy school and those who despise going to school
- those who are the class clowns or are always raising their hands during class and those who never speak in class unless spoken to

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- filters within society
- respecting others
- respect within America
- living in a divided country
- social media is perceived usually as bad, but it might be the only thing that can help unify our country
-why we need to stop blaming everything on mental illness
-how high school changes people, usually for the worst, why it happens how it happens and how it has changed me
-how high school has completely changed my mindset from what it once was
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Expert facts, testimony, facts, interview, imagery, statistics and anecdotes

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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One of the Editorials That I Found Interesting

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One of the Editorials That I Found Interesting

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Some argue that the risks of hallucinogen use are too great to warrant their exploration as treatments for psychological disorders. However, hallucinogens do not have the same potential for addiction as alcohol, nicotine and opioids. In addition, hallucinogen persisting perception disorder - colloquially known as "flashbacks" - occurs in far lower frequencies than was originally thought in the 1970s and 1980s and is unlikely to occur in patients who take controlled doses of the hallucinogens in clinical settings.

Indeed, hallucinogens may be far safer than originally thought - not only physiologically, but also in the sense that their potential to treat high-risk disorders could save thousands of lives lost due to suicide, smoking-related cancers and overdoses each year.

Certainly, hallucinogens are no panacea. However, if their applications as treatments for psychological disorders are properly explored and their Schedule I status challenged, hallucinogenic drugs may prove to be the 21st century's next medical breakthrough.
Works Cited
Al-Harbi, Khalid S. "Treatment-Resistant Depression: Therapeutic Trends, Challenges, and Future Directions." Journal of Patient Preference and Adherence 6 (2012): 369-388. National Center for Biotechnology Information. Web. 23 Feb. 2017.

Hegarty, Stephanie. " Can a Hallucinogen from Africa Cure Addiction? " BBC News. The BBC, 3 Apr. 2012.

Hoffman, Jan. " A Dose of a Hallucinogen From a 'Magic Mushroom,' and Then Lasting Peace. " The New York Times. The New York Times, 1 Dec. 2017. Web. 15 Feb. 2017.

Mithoefer, Michael C., et al. "The Safety and Efficacy of 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine-Assisted Psychotherapy in Subjects With Chronic, Treatment-Resistant Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: The First Randomized Controlled Pilot Study." Journal of Psychopharmacology 25.4 (2012): 439-452. Web. 24 Feb. 2017.

Phillip, Abby. " Hallucinogen in 'Magic Mushrooms' Might Have Helped Smokers Quit. " The Washington Post. The Washington Post, 12 Sept. 2014. Web. 17 Feb. 2017.

Santella, Thomas. Understanding Drugs: Hallucinogens. New York: Chelsea House, 2012. Print.

Williams, Alex. " How LSD Saved One Woman's Marriage. " The New York Times. The New York Times, 7 Jan. 2017. Web. 5 March 2017.

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Editorial Contest Winner | 'A Psychedelic Cure?'

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Some argue that the risks of hallucinogen use are too great to warrant their exploration as treatments for psychological disorders. However, hallucinogens do not have the same potential for addiction as alcohol, nicotine and opioids.

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Here's one way: Start strong. Grab our attention in the first few sentences, but don't take too long to state your argument.

Here's another: Pick a fresh topic, or a new angle on a popular topic, and be very clear about what you are arguing. Often when students narrow in on a specific concern, their editorial becomes more persuasive.

What else? Write with an original, confident voice and avoid formulaic language and structure. And if appropriate, acknowledge, and deftly dispatch, counterarguments.

Below, we list 10 winners, 15 runners-up and 45 honorable mentions. We also include a PDF of all the finalists, including 58 who made the cut to the third round of judging, but didn't quite reach the winner's circle.

Starting May 22, we will be publishing one of the Top 10 essays each weekday in posts that we hope you will spread on social media, hang on school bulletin boards and perhaps even use as "mentor texts" for next year's contest.

Thank you for participating - and we hope you'll take part in our Summer Reading Contest, starting June 16.

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Student Editorial Contest Winners

Each category below lists our favorites in alphabetical order by title. Where titles were missing, we came up with our own.
Top 10 Winners
" A Psychedelic Cure?" by Reagan Briere, age 16
" In Nothing We Trust" by Francesca Kelley, age 18
" Leave the Citizens to Their TV Shows" by Yijia Hu, age 17
" Losing the Internet" by David Scharts, age 15
" Reform the Prison, Then the Prisoner" by Katherine Leonard, age 16
" Stopping Bullets With Locked Doors and Silence Is Already Pulling the Trigger" by Daina Kalnina, age 15
" The Anguish of the Rich" by Yiqi Wang, age 17
" The Asian Misnomer: What the Affirmative Action Debate Misses" by Matteo Wong, age 16
" The Collateral Damage of Defending Democracy" by Sarah Heiland, age 18
" The Missing Anthropological Exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History " by Alec Farber, age 16
_________ Runners-Up
"America First" by Safa Saleh, age 17
"America? More Like Ameri-Can't Vote" by Gianni Carcagno, age 17
"Climate Literacy: A Critical Step Toward Climate Stability" by Ella Shriner, age 14 and Hannah Witscher, age 15
"Cultural Appropriation: A Measure of Empathy" by James Chang, age 16
"Discourse Is Democracy: Allowing Uncensored Speech on College Campuses" by Abigail Hogan, age 17
"Drone Warfare: The Failing Fight Against the Modern Hydra" by Michael Levinger, age 16
"Generation Code Red" by Grace Scullion, age 16
"Humane Human Zoo?" by Ella Ward, age 15
"Paper or Plastic? How About a Paper ON Plastic!" by Melody Markert, age 17
"The Future Disintegration of American Democracy Through Athletics" by Julianne Yu, age 16
"The Case for Teaching News Literacy" by Mary Hannah Grier, age 17
"The Unspoken Alphabet Problem" by Stephanie Zhang, age 14
"The 'War on Drugs' Will Never Work; Legalization Will" by Kristina Vakhman, age 18
"There Is No Happily Ever After Without Once Upon a Time" by Bridget O'Leary, age 17
"When Will This Class Be Useful?" by Casey Stark, age 15
_________ Honorable Mentions
"#WorldChanger" by Joyce Zhou, age 17
"A Case for Impassiveness" by Lea Marchl, age 16
"A Scoop in the Right Direction" by Emma S., age 18
"AP Tests Don't Leave Enough Room for the Human Side of History" by Tom Malmgren, age 16
"Are My Shoulders Distracting You?" by Mairi Alice Dun, age 17
"Autism: Educated and Extraordinary" by Isabella Zhang, age 17
"Bittersweet" by Rena Rachlin, age 15 "Child Labor in the U.S. Today" by Jasmine Campos, age 16 and Charlotte Principal, age 16
"China Needs Silver Lining" by Wangchen Zhou, age 17
"Colleges Should Abandon Race-Based Affirmative Action to Achieve True Diversity" by Eric Davis, age 18
"Embrace the Mess" by Chi Yu, age 14
"Fast Fashion Is Destroying Our World" by Melissa Wang, age 17
"Food Stamps Need a Change" by Patrick Meara, age 17
"Governor Cuomo Frees the Plastic Bagss" by Jiayan Chen, age 17
"Help Wanted: Moderate Politicians" by Ireland Degges, age 17
"High School Should Not Just Be About Sports" by Swathi Kella, age 16
"How Far Can Post-Truth Democracy Take Us?" by Jiahe Yang, age 18
"How to Revitalize the Public Education System" by Dhara Yu, age 18
"Last Man Standing" by Kathryn Porter, age 16
"Leave Me Alone" by Celia Silver, age 17
"More Than a Morning Kick" by Emma Cary, age 16
"Multiple Choice: Not Multiple Enough" by Yi-Mei Templeman, age 17
"Picking Cotton: An Immigrant's Perspective" by Allan Njomo, age 16
"Post-Democracy" by Nadav Ziv, age 17
"Should Juvenile Offenders Receive Life Sentences Without Parole on Their First Offense?" by Tayler Gavetti, age 16
"Should Obamacare Be Repealed?" by William Pharo, age 16
"Single Payer: A Cure for America's Healthcare Woes" by Akshay Manglik, age 13
"Streaky Friendship" by Yuxin Long, age 16
"Technology: A Hindrance to Learning" by Zachary Weiss, age 17
"Teens, Technology, and The Pursuit of Happiness" by Sam Jagolinzer, age 17
"The Bluest Note" by Nicholas Dasoveanu, age 18
"The College Conspiracy" by Serenity W., age 17
"The Cost of Health Care May Be in Your Genes" by Sophia Lo, age 16
"The Demoralizing of the Elizabethan Language" by Olivia Seymour, age 14
"The Disposable Nightmare" by Tianxin Guo, age 14
"The Education Gap" by Adam Traweek, age 16 "The Environment in the Age of Trump" by Elliot Tuttle, age 17
"The Growing Problem of Screen Addiction" by Kaitlin Craig, age 16
"The Picture of Education We Must Change" by Danielle Naidrich, age 17
"Tipping the Pay Scale" by Ruhee Damle, age 14
"Untitled" by Melinda Hartz, age 16
"We Should Be Teaching Rap Music in Schools" by Jack Zuckerman, age 19
"What Do You Call Someone That Only Speaks One Language? An American." by Paige Patton, age 16
"Where Are All the Rainbows?" by Storm Viridian Murray, age 17
"Where Trump's Ban Stands Legally" by Marcus Linde, age 16
_________ And All the Finalists, Including 58 More Great Editorials That Made It to Round 3 (PDF) Judges: Amanda Christy Brown, Shannon Doyne, Caroline Crosson Gilpin, Michael Gonchar, Annissa Hambouz, Thomas Houston, Shira Katz, Willow Lawson, Linda Leavitt, Sue Mermelstein, Anna North, Roxie Salamon-Abrams, Katherine Schulten, Matt Schwarzfeld, Natlie Shutler and Kate Spence-Ado

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A Call to Action: Winners From Our Fourth Annual Student Editorial Contest

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Here's one way: Start strong. Grab our attention in the first few sentences, but don't take too long to state your argument. Here's another: Pick a fresh topic, or a new angle on a popular topic, and be very clear about what you are arguing.

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One of the Editorials That I Found Interesting

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One of the Editorials That I Found Interesting

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We are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Third Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day. You can find them all here.

Below, an essay by Hope Kurth, age 17.
How Ableism Lives On
Five-star restaurant, four family members. A hostess sets down thick, leather menus in one, two, three places before proceeding to drop a flimsy half-piece of paper in front of my brother. He scrunches his eyebrows together and glares at my parents as if to say "not this again" - the kid-menu debacle that automatically ensues when you have Down syndrome. He's 22 years old, a working man with a diploma, yet abled people always seem to have one inability: to see him as anything but a kid.

Fortunately, the world is changing - with implementations like Best Buddies, Rosa's Law and the Americans With Disabilities Act. But a couple of things are keeping America from fully including and involving people with disabilities into everyday life naturally: society's colloquial language and the style of disability advocacy.

Thankfully, Spread the Word to End the Word and similar campaigns have attempted to mark words like "retarded" as taboo (however, 56 percent of Americans don't think it's offensive to call themselves the r-word, and 38 percent don't find a problem in calling their friends it either). But left in their wake are "boom-boom," "mental" and "slow." Of course, any well-intentioned person can forget and succumb to using these words - but if we ever want to see full integration, we have to let them go.

Some say that nitpicking words like "crazy" and "lame" will just start another political correctness battle, and that there is no easy way to eliminate them. But before deeming this challenge "too hard," think about how difficult it is for 48.9 million Americans to not only have a disability, but to be reminded of it in everyday conversations.

Another problem arises in the fact that two-thirds of people claim to be uncomfortable talking to people with disabilities because they don't know how to act politely around them. This awkward silence is too often filled with well-meaning (yet meaningless) statements like "You're God's special gift." But again, people who are uncomfortable around those with disabilities aren't usually out to discriminate. However, with the rise of politicians like Donald Trump, who "mocked" a reporter with arthrogryposis, more citizens are following the path to discriminatory speech.

Lastly, viral posts about those with disabilities have lately been deemed "inspiration porn," mainly for the reason that they've been used to inspire a retweet or a reblog, but no actual action. These posts make it seem as if the only purpose of those with disabilities is to inspire abled people - not to live a fulfilling life in the way they please.

Many of us possess good intentions about disabilities - but if we really want to solve ableism in America, we have to watch our patterns of speech (even jokes) and consider taking action instead of just hitting repost.
Works Cited
Haberman, Maggie. "Donald Trump Says His Mocking of New York Times Reporter Was Misread." The New York Times. The New York Times, 26 Nov. 2015. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.

Higgins, Karrie. "Dear Able Friends, I Am Not Your Inspiration Porn." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.

"NSIP - Basic Facts: People with Disabilities." NSIP - Basic Facts: People with Disabilities. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.

"20 Amazing Disability Discrimination Statistics - BrandonGaille.com." BrandonGaillecom. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Mar. 2016.

"Announcing 'The Shriver Report Snapshot: Insight Into Intellectual Disabilities in the 21st Century.' " Maria Shriver. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Mar. 2016.

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Editorial Contest Winner | 'How Ableism Lives On'

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We are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Third Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day. You can find them all here. Below, an essay by Hope Kurth, age 17. How Ableism Lives On Five-star restaurant, four family members.

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Contests

One of our 2017 editorial winners wrote about China's unofficial ban on Korean cultural exports, such as the boy band Exo. Credit... Starnews, via Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

The challenge is fairly straightforward. Choose a topic you care about, gather evidence from sources both within and outside The Times and write a concise editorial (450 words or less) to convince readers of your view.

Because editorial writing at newspapers is a collaborative process, you can write your entry as a team effort or by yourself. When you're done, submit it using the contest form below by Thursday, April 5, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Be sure to read the rules, also below, before posting.

Our judges will then use this rubric (PDF) for selecting winners to publish on The Learning Network.

As teachers know, the persuasive essay has long been a staple of high school education, but the Common Core standards seem to have put evidence-based argumentative writing on everybody's agenda. You couldn't ask for a more real-world example of the genre than the classic newspaper editorial - and The Times publishes, on average, two of them a day.

And at a time when breaking out of one's "filter bubble" is more important than ever, we hope this contest also encourages students to broaden their news diets by using multiple sources, ideally ones that offer a range of perspectives on their chosen issue.

So what issue do you care about? Gun violence? Sexual harassment? Social media? You decide.

Good luck, and please post any questions you might have in the comments. We'll answer you there.

_________
Note: The submission form has been removed from this page. The contest is closed.
_________

Video

The New York Times's editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal provides seven tips for writing an effective editorial.

To help with this challenge, Andrew Rosenthal, in his previous role as Editorial Page editor of The Times, detailed seven pointers in the video above. And we have published related lesson plans, including " For the Sake of Argument: Writing Persuasively to Craft Short, Evidence-Based Editorials," " I Don't Think So: Writing Effective Counterarguments" and " 10 Ways to Teach Argument-Writing With The New York Times," that offer additional teaching ideas.

We have also culled a list of 401 prompts for argumentative writing organized by category, to help inspire you - although, of course, you are not limited to those topics.

We encourage you to look at both our comments on last year's winners and the winning essays themselves. They can serve as excellent models, and they cover topics from active-shooter school lockdowns to Korean television shows in China.

In addition, you can watch our free, archived webinar, featuring the Op-Ed columnist Nicholas Kristof and Kabby Hong, a high school English teacher.

1. Use at least one Times source. You can write your editorial about any topic, as long as you use at least one source from The Times. That should pretty much open the whole world to you, as you may be surprised how much you can find in The Times.

Be advised that nytimes.com has a digital subscription system in which readers have access to five free articles each month, but after that you will be asked to become a digital subscriber. The Times also offers K-12 digital subscription plans for schools. But all Learning Network activities for students, including our daily writing prompts, as well as Times articles linked from them, are free, so you can access them without exceeding the five-article limit.

2. Use at least one non-Times source. But make sure that the source you use is a reliable one. We encourage you to find sources that offer different perspectives on an issue.

3. Always cite your sources. Our submission form contains a required field for entering your citations. We include an example as well, though you can use M.L.A. or A.P.A. styles, or just list the website URLs. Even if you use a print source or an expert interview, you must provide a citation. Readers (and judges) should always know where you got your evidence.

4. Be concise. The editorial must not exceed 450 words. Your title and list of sources are separate, however, and do not count as part of your 450-word limit.

5. Have an opinion. Editorials are different from news articles because they try to persuade readers to share your point of view. Don't be afraid to take a stand.

6. Write your editorial by yourself or with a group. If you are working as a team, just remember to submit all of your names when you post your entry. But please submit only one editorial per student. If you're submitting as part of a team, you should not also submit as an individual.

7. Be original and use appropriate language. Write for a well-informed audience, but include enough background information to give context. Be careful not to plagiarize: Use quotation marks around lines you take verbatim from another source, or rephrase and cite your source.

8. Submissions must be from students who are 13 to 19 years old, and they may come from anywhere in the world. Unlike in previous years, students can now use their entire name if they want.

9. All entries must be submitted by April 5 at 11:59 p.m. Easternusing the contest form above. If you have questions about the contest, feel free to post them in the comments section, and we'll respond to you there.

10. Follow these instructions if you need proof that you entered this contest. Within an hour of submitting your editorial, you should receive an email from "The New York Times" with the subject heading "Thank you for your submission to our Student Editorial Contest." If you don't receive the email within an hour, even after checking your spam folder, then you can resubmit your entry. Be sure your settings allow emails from nytimes.com.

After two attempts and waiting over one full day, if you still have not received a confirmation email, you can contact us at LNFeedback@nytimes.com with the email address you used in the contest form. Use the subject heading "Please send me an email confirmation for my editorial contest submission." Be sure to include your name and editorial title (or subject) in your email. You may have to wait up to a week for a reply.

11. We will use this rubric (PDF) to judge entries, and the winning editorials will be featured on The Learning Network.

" Writing an Editorial" Unit Plan, by Lindsay Thompson

" Reader Idea | He Said, She Said, I Say: A Researched Argument Essay," by Danielle Harms

" Reader Idea | Using an Op-Doc Video to Teach Argumentative Writing," by Allison Marchetti

" Reader Idea | Using Room for Debate to Teach Argumentative Writing and Discussion Skills," by Gerard Dawson and Justin Rex

" Reader Idea | An Argument-Writing Unit: Crafting Student Editorials," by Kayleen Everitt

Good luck and have fun. We welcome your questions and comments if we have omitted details that might be useful. Let us know how we can help.

_________
The Learning Network runs contests for teenagers all year long. See our full calendar.

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Our Fifth Annual Student Editorial Contest: Write About an Issue That Matters to You (Published 2018)

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Contests The challenge is fairly straightforward. Choose a topic you care about, gather evidence from sources both within and outside The Times and write a concise editorial (450 words or less) to convince readers of your view. Because editorial writing at newspapers is a collaborative process, you can write your entry as a team effort or by yourself.