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How many plastic bags do we briefly use and then throw away every week? We get our takeout food, drugstore purchases and clothing bagged, and our groceries double-bagged. All those single-use plastic bags may be cheap for consumers, but their costs add up. Plastic bags end up stuffing landfills, clogging sewers, polluting animal habitats and even fluttering in trees for years. California became the first state to ban plastic bags in 2014, although that law has been temporarily put on hold, and dozens of cities or counties have either banned the use of plastic bags or imposed a fee for their use.

Should single-use plastic shopping bags be banned in your state or community?

New York City is one of those places that has been considering a citywide ban. In the November 2014 article "New York City Council Hearing on Fee for Bags Becomes Heated," Matt Flegenheimer writes:

For years, the plastic bag has doubled as a sort of urban tumbleweed, sweeping across New York City sidewalks and encroaching ominously on its waterways, clustering on subway tracks and drifting airborne to the tree limbs of residential blocks.

Now the bags have divided a City Council that has found little about which to disagree. On Wednesday, a hearing grew heated as lawmakers considered what seemed to be a simple question: Are plastic bags a problem to be solved, as environmental advocates have long argued, or a necessary, and relatively harmless, part of city life?

The debate centered on a proposal to charge 10 cents for each single-use checkout bag at retail and grocery stores, in an effort to encourage customers to bring their own. The charge would also apply to paper bags, the bill's sponsors said, because they are more expensive for businesses to purchase. (A ban on plastics alone could lead customers to switch exclusively to paper, harming the businesses, according to the bill's supporters.)

Councilman Brad Lander of Brooklyn, a Democrat, one of the proposal's co-sponsors, suggested that the specter of a fee - or, as opponents have called it, a tax - was in fact the legislation's strength.

"People don't want to pay for something that used to be free," he said before a hearing of the Council's committee on sanitation and solid waste management. "That's why this bill works."

The de Blasio administration expressed an openness to the bill on Wednesday, saying it was "supportive of efforts to reduce single-use carryout bags" and noting their "negative environmental impacts."

At the hearing, Kathryn Garcia, the city's sanitation commissioner, said the department collected an average of 1,700 tons of plastic bags per week. It costs $12.5 million annually to dispose of the materials outside the city. Ms. Garcia said the bags threatened marine animals that often mistook them for a food source, and could jam sorting machines at recycling facilities.

But opponents - including some activists, council members from both parties and plastic bag manufacturers - have framed the proposed fee as a regressive tax, most likely to affect low-income and minority communities. Critics noted that plastic bags were often reused, and many argued that they rarely encountered bags on the street. Some called on the city to focus instead on litter prevention and recycling campaigns.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us ...

- Should single-use plastic shopping bags be banned in your state or community? Why?

- Do you think lightweight shopping bags are wasteful and polluting? Or do you think they are worth their weight in the benefits they provide to daily life?

- Do you think imposing a fee, or tax, for using plastic bags, as Washington has done, is a regressive tax? In other words, does it hurt poor people more? Or is it just good governance, creating an incentive for everyone to bring his or her own bags instead of constantly getting new bags after each shopping trip?

- Do you think about your use of plastic bags? Do you ever take your own bags, tell a store clerk you don't need a bag or save your old bags for reuse?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

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Should Single-Use Plastic Shopping Bags Be Banned?

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How many plastic bags do we briefly use and then throw away every week? We get our takeout food, drugstore purchases and clothing bagged, and our groceries double-bagged. All those single-use plastic bags may be cheap for consumers, but their costs add up.

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Disposable shopping bags are convenient, but they are a major source of waste and pollution in our society. In this guide, we will teach you about how plastic shopping bags damage the environment. We also will discuss alternatives to using plastic shopping bags.

With this information, you will be able to make an impact in your community to reduce waste and pollution.

Plastic Shopping Bag Pollution

Plastic shopping bags present many problems to the world. Below are the biggest ones.

Human Impact

Plastic shopping bags on land are one of the most common types of litter. Build ups of huge quantities of plastic bags are well known to block local drainage systems, especially in developing countries. For example, the floods in Bangladesh 20 years ago were partially attributed to blockages in drainage systems from plastic shopping bags. Plastic shopping bags also pose health risks to human populations over the years as they leach toxins into water supplies.

Plastic bags also are problematic to recycle. While the recyclable symbol of three arrows in a circle is on many plastic shopping bags in the US, it often is a marketing trick. There are no regulations about how that symbol is used, and every city and county in America has different regulations about what can be recycled. Many plastic bags that are collected by recycling companies cannot really be recycled. Most of these bags actually end up in landfills and sit there for hundreds of years.

Animal Impact

Midway Atoll in the North Pacific Ocean is the home of the biggest albatross colony on Earth. These birds fly there to next on these highly isolated islands, and they forage at sea, often hundreds of miles out, to look for food for offspring. Unfortunately, thousands of these precious birds have been found dead at Midway because they had ingested large amounts of plastic bag shards and pieces. All of the plastic that was found in these birds is brought to the island by adult birds who then feed it to young birds. It is estimated that four tons of plastic accumulates here daily.

The majority of wildlife on Earth is in our seas and oceans. This means there are hundreds of other animals and birds who are at risk of injury and death by ingesting or being entangled in plastic bag flotsam. Floating plastic shopping bags can be mistaken to be jellyfish by marine animals who consume them. One species that is at risk from the bags are sea turtles. They risk extinction in part because of ingesting large amounts of plastics. Shards of plastic fester in the stomach because the plastic cannot be properly digested.

An autopsy of the stomach of a beached whale found 20 square feet of plastic shopping bags that took up its whole stomach. Similar cases have been observed over the past few decades after plastic bags were introduced.

Environmental Impact

Litter from plastic bags is not just on land. Plastic shopping bags have heavily contributed to a huge amount of plastic debris found in the North Pacific Ocean. This is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is estimated to be double the size of Hawaii, and could even be as large as the entire continental US. The Wild Studies Institute has reported that as all drains go to the ocean, 80% of this trash in the ocean originated from land.

Kamilo Beach in Hawaii is often buried in several feet of plastic bags that washes in from the sea. There also is a joke in New York City, which uses a billion plastic bags per year, that the flower of the city is actually a plastic shopping bag stuck in a tree.

What You Can Do to Reduce Use of Plastic Shopping Bags

Clearly there is a problem with plastic shopping bags, but what can you do about it in your community?

1. Educate yourself about how plastic bags affect the world. As you can read above, plastic shopping bags are a huge environmental problem around the world and are causing huge issues that affect human and animal health. Also, educate your friends, family, neighbors and children about the impact plastic bags have on the world.

2. Use reusable shopping bags. Obviously, a major step is to use your own reusable shopping bags instead of plastic bags. Reusable shopping bags are available in many colors and styles. You also can buy them in various weights for different types of products, such as heavy cans and other weighty/bulky items.

3. If you have any plastic bags at home, reuse them. Plastic bags can be difficult to recycle, so it is wise to reuse plastic shopping bags at home for as long as you can. They are good to line small trash cans.

4. Find stores that offer a credit for using reusable bags. Some cities in the US have passed plastic bag bans and more are doing so every year. Some stores will offer a cash credit for bringing reusable bags. Ask the next time you are checking out if you can get a discount for using reusable shopping bags.

5. Count the plastic bags brought into your home in a week. When we actually count the number of bags we bring in weekly, it can spur us to take action.

6. Spread the word. Decline plastic bags at the checkout counter and remind the cashier and others around you that plastic bags hurt the environment. Yes, reusable shopping bags cost you initially, but they can be used endlessly and help the planet.

7. Fundraising. Reusable bags are extremely versatile, which makes the possibilities for fundraising virtually endless. You can sell them outright, use them in concert, school or college, community church or with another fundraiser, or even create themed gift totes by filling them up with an assortment items.

Amazing Infographics for Your Site or Project

Check out some of these incredible infographics with tons of facts and statistics. Place any of these on your website or use for a school project.

Plastic Bag Recycling Tips

It is true that recycling plastic bags is problematic. That is the reason it is best to reuse plastic bags as much as possible. That said, there are ways that municipalities have been encouraging citizens to help them to recycle plastic bags.

One of the ways that plastic bags can be recycled is to place them in the recycling bin, with one caveat. People need to wad up the plastic bags into roughly the size of a soccer ball in some cities and tie it. Then, you can place the bags in the recycling bin. If you follow these steps, most city recycling facilities in the US can recycle the bags.

The problem is when people put individual bags into the recycling stream, and this action usually causes problems with recycling machinery.

These steps may not apply to every jurisdiction. So, if you need to recycle some plastic bags, you should check with your city or town to determine how to do it in a way that is friendly to the environment.

Recap

Hopefully, this article has made clear the dangers and problems with plastic bags, and what you can do to reduce the problem.

Learn More

To learn more about plastic pollution, consult the resources listed below.

Learn More on ReuseThisBag.com

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Environmental Impact. Effects, Dangers of Plastic Bags - ReuseThisBag.com

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Disposable shopping bags are convenient, but they are a major source of waste and pollution in our society. In this guide, we will teach you about how plastic shopping bags damage the environment. We also will discuss alternatives to using plastic shopping bags.

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Maybe it's unfair to pick on the Girl Scouts, because trans fats are all around us, from French fries to some brands of ice cream. And at least the Girl Scouts have taken trans fats out of some of their cookies (though of the eight kinds my daughter's Brownie troop sold, only Lemon Coolers and Tagalongs seemed to have none).

But that's the problem we have in risk assessments. There are certain kinds of risks - say, fears of Saddam Hussein - that galvanize us to mobilize an army and devote $1 trillion to confront the challenge. Meanwhile, we do nothing about threats that are much more likely to kill us - like trans fats peddled by cute little girls.

Actually, it's a pity that Girl Scout cookies are being sold by cherubs. If the sellers were Iranians with turbans and menacing frowns, then the authorities might be more alert to the dangers.

The Food and Drug Administration has required food companies to list trans fats in labels of packaged products, so companies are beginning to remove trans fats from their foods. Kraft, for example, has removed trans fats from all of its Oreos and many other foods.

But Americans now get 38 percent of their calories from restaurant food, and the F.D.A. so far has refused to require restaurants to disclose trans fat content. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has filed a petition asking the F.D.A. to require restaurants to disclose the presence of trans fats in their foods, as well as another petition that would in effect come close to banning manufactured trans fats altogether.

Both moves make sense. Denmark, for example, has quite successfully adopted a law stipulating that no more than 2 percent of the fats in foods sold there can be industrially produced trans fats.

The result is that if you walk into a McDonald's in Copenhagen and order a large meal of chicken nuggets and French fries, you'll get just 0.33 grams of trans fatty acids. Walk into a McDonald's in the U.S. and order the same meal, and you get 10.1 grams of trans fats.

That was the finding of a study published last month in The New England Journal of Medicine. It found huge variations: an order of fries and chicken at KFC provided almost 25 grams of trans fats in Hungary, but negligible amounts in Denmark, Russia and Wiesbaden, Germany.

To put those numbers in perspective, just five grams of trans fats per day are associated with a 25 percent greater risk of a heart attack.

Prowl a supermarket, and you see that Pop Secret Butter Microwave Popcorn has 5 grams of trans fats per serving, Keebler Chips Deluxe cookies have 1.5 grams of trans fats per cookie, and Drake's Yodels and Ring Dings have 2 grams. At Denny's, carrot cake has 3 grams.

It's difficult for the food industry to claim that trans fats are unavoidable when the Danes manage to avoid them. And there's no justification for letting restaurants inflict them on us without informing us.

Look, there are a lot of risks that we can't do much about. Brain tumors, for example. Or plane crashes. Or foreign leaders who are absolutely determined to produce nuclear weapons. But trans fats kill more Americans than any of those, and they're very easy to protect against - so I hope the Bush administration will follow the Danish model and curb the use of trans fats.

And in the meantime (now that my daughter has finished selling her cookies), here's a step you can take: Set up a neighborhood watch team to be alert for little girls intent on clogging your arteries and killing you with their sweetness.

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Maybe it's unfair to pick on the Girl Scouts, because trans fats are all around us, from French fries to some brands of ice cream. And at least the Girl Scouts have taken trans fats out of some of their cookies (though of the eight kinds my daughter's Brownie troop sold, only Lemon Coolers and Tagalongs seemed to have none).

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Contests

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A lockdown drill interrupted an eighth-grade gym class. Related Article Credit Credit Alec Soth/Magnum, for The New York Times

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

Below, an essay by Daina Kalnina, age 15.
Stopping Bullets With Locked Doors and Silence Is Already Pulling the Trigger
_______

It has become very familiar for high-school students to practice the infamous level-three lockdown. In all cases, we all share the semi-nervous chuckle of "wow, maybe we get Swiss-cheesed today" and sit in a corner, stare at our phones and text our friends. Only very recently, after a vivid dream - more a nightmare - of a school shooting, did I realize that sitting in the dark and stopping bullets with locked doors and silence is the exact opposite of what one would want to do. It wasn't until I stumbled upon the fact that the "people shot and killed in the Columbine library sat there for five minutes before the shooters entered and shot them." My school is full of able-bodied kids, and surprisingly, a great chunk that has had experience with self-defense and even marksmen training. So why sit and wait?

To say that the drills today are relevant is a mistake. They do more than just offer very little protection; they also endanger students and teachers more so than ever before. The lockdowns I've been taught over and over again, sitting in the dark, actually tell future active shooters exactly where we're going to be - cornered. More so, in The New York Times article, " In Shift, Police Advise Taking an Active Role to Counter Mass Attacks," studies conducted by law enforcement in the Virginia Tech shooting showed that "the students and teacher blocked the door with a heavy desk and held it in place, [the shooter] could not get in, and everyone lived," compared to those that tried to "hide or play dead," in which almost all were shot or died. It is shown more clearly here than ever by making the vital choice to barricade and move as a means of security will utilize finite time better and save lives.

Many educators and parents have questioned the authenticity and have begun to develop alternatives for active-shooter lockdowns. The ALICE project is one such adaptation. Developed by a former SWAT officer Greg Cane, ALICE stands for alert, lockdown, inform, counter, evacuate. It provides specialized tactics for K-12 and higher education schools. Fundamentally, a moving target is harder to get an aim on than a stationary one. That same difference marks ALICE's method from the old one; it encourages movement, distraction and most importantly, it encourages direct action from students and teachers. This significantly decreases the number of lives lost and helps me sleep a little bit better at night knowing that if the time ever comes, I'm not idly waiting to become Swiss cheese.

It's unnerving that the students of this country must learn how to cope with active shooters.
Works Cited
It's even more unnerving that current procedures say that they should sit, wait and die.

Lupkin, Sydney. " School Safety Experts Disagree on Lock Down Procedures." ABC News. ABC News Network, 16 Dec. 2012. Web. Mar. 2017.

Cane, Greg. "Active Shooter Response Training - ALICE" ALICE Training Institute. ALICE, n.d. Web. Mar. 2017.

Goode, Erica. " In Shift, Police Advise Taking an Active Role to Counter Mass Attacks." The New York Times. The New York Times, 06 Apr. 2013. Web. Mar. 2017.

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Editorial Contest Winner | 'Stopping Bullets With Locked Doors and Silence Is Already Pulling the Trigger'

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Contests We are honoring each of the Top 10 winners of our Fourth Annual Student Editorial Contest by publishing an essay a day. You can find them all here. Below, an essay by Daina Kalnina, age 15.

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Contests

One of this year's winners wrote about school lockdown drills. Related Article Credit... Alec Soth/Magnum, for The New York Times

Update | Read the work of _________ this year's 10 winners here and this year's runners-up here.
For the past four years we've invited students to write short editorials about issues they care about, and each year thousands take up the challenge.

Students often start with thoughtful questions from their own lives: Why is my school's athletic program better funded than its music program? Why do we hide in the corner of our classroom during active shooter drills? Why don't my classmates stand during the Pledge of Allegiance? And they develop sophisticated, sincere and well researched answers in response.

Students look at the nation's and world's problems and hunt for solutions - to improve the plight of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in China, for example, or to reduce recidivism rates for U.S. prisons.

We really like this contest because it asks students to look closely at their world and find something, large or small, they want to change. So, if you don't like being last in line all the time because your surname starts with "Z," then take a stand. If you want more characters in books and movies to be more like you, then write about it. If you want society to be less wasteful or more tolerant, then tell the world. Change starts with noticing, thinking critically, and starting meaningful conversations - and that's what these students have done in their editorials.

But winning this contest? It's no easy task being selected as a winner out of 7,895 entries, a record. How do you make your writing stand out from the piles of other editorials submitted to our contest - especially when you have no more than 450 words to get your point across?

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.

_________

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 (Published 2017)

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Contests Update | Read the work of _________ this year's 10 winners here and this year's runners-up here . For the past four years we've invited students to write short editorials about issues they care about, and each year thousands take up the challenge.

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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.

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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.