A Decade of Writing, Teaching, and Community: Reflecting on Ten Years of Ethical ELA

In early May 2015, I started this blog as a way to document my teaching experiences after earning my doctorate. Unlike many who pursue a PhD and then transition into academia, I made the deliberate decision to stay in the classroom as a junior high teacher. My goal was to share the ideas I was implementing—ideas that had been shaped by my research, my writing, and my evolving understanding of education. And my spouse told me, “You better do something with this PhD.” Ethical ELA was my something.

Before Ethical ELA, I explored blogging for my short-lived beach volleyball journey. Writing helped me document my first pro season in 2009- as a teacher-athlete. In 2012, about 2 years into my doctorate, I found the blog site to be useful for keeping notes during my doctoral program, documenting how I drew on genocide studies to revise my junior high reading curriculum, and reviving writing instruction through Yagelski’s concept of “writing as a way of being.” I used writing to process and document my learning and teaching around the ethics (what is good and right) in teaching English language arts. I don’t think anyone even knew about these spaces. I was publishing but not distributing.

When I began Ethical ELA, I invested in a url, webhost, tech support. The financial commitment (as opposed to free blogging sites) meant that I was entering a more public writing sphere or public scholarship, which was not a term I knew at the time. Academic journals and even teacher resources are behind paywalls. I wanted the research and practice on Ethical ELA to be free to teachers and teacher educators. While public scholarship refers to academic research and teaching that is intended for audiences beyond the university and to bridge the gap between scholarly expertise and public understanding of important issues, I always thought that teachers had a wealth of expertise that was often not included in the public scholarship. To reach and engage teachers, however, meant that I would need to work harder to make connections. So, I shared posts on Facebook and Instagram. I promoted the site when I spoke at conferences. I even promoted the site on podcasts. This distribution work has been, by far, the most challenging part of keeping the site alive until COVID, when everything changed.

What started as a space for sparking conversations around ethical ELA practices has since transformed into something far greater: a living, breathing community of teachers and teacher educators, a hub for creative expression, and a testament to the power of collaboration.

As we mark ten years of this blog, I want to take a moment to reflect on its evolution, its impact, and what I’ve learned along the way.

The Evolution: From One Voice to Many

The original purpose of this blog was to write about my experiences teaching youth. I was a teacher-researcher, experimenting with ideas in my own classroom and then sharing what worked (or didn’t) with others. I had developed as a writer during my PhD, and blogging became a natural extension of that process—an informal space to continue engaging with ideas and practice.

For the first few years, I wrote regularly, documenting lessons, sharing insights, and reflecting on the complexities of classroom life. Every April, for National Poetry Month, my students and students from other states (often students of my student teachers or preservice teachers) wrote together on Ethical ELA. But in 2019, I made the difficult decision to leave junior high teaching. Without a direct connection to daily classroom experiences, I wrote less frequently. The blog began to shift. I wrote a bit about my transition to higher education, but these posts didn’t resonate so much with my teacher-friends who were navigating day-to-day life teaching young people. I thought, maybe, Ethical ELA was ending. Five years was a good run.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. And with it, everything changed, in part because of National Poetry Month. (See Donovan, S. & Boutlier, S. (2023). Human-centered Poem-ing: The care of teacher-writers online. Writing & Pedagogy. International.https://doi.org/10.1558/wap.24337 )

Since 2016, I had been hosting an annual poetry event—a way for teachers to write and reflect together (now called Verselove). But in the isolation of lockdown, that space became something more. Poetry writing became a way for teachers to process what was happening in real-time. It became an anchor.

Ethical ELA became a place where teachers—many of whom had been reading the blog for years—began to contribute their own writing. Poetry became the heartbeat of the site, offering a collective history of our shared struggles, resilience, and hope. And in that spirit of community, I started inviting scholars and teachers to be guest bloggers, sharing their own reflections on teaching, learning, and living.

The Impact: A Million Visitors and a Lasting Legacy

Over the past decade, this website has had over a million visitors. That number still astonishes me. But what stands out even more than the numbers are the moments that made this space truly significant.

One of the most pivotal posts wasn’t even written by me. It was a guest post by another teacher, Lisa Nassar, about why they had stopped using reading logs. That single post gained traction across the education world, pushing the blog into the broader edublog sphere toward The Washington Post a couple of days later. It demonstrated something essential: teachers were hungry for conversations about the practices we take for granted, about what we do in our classrooms, and why.

But perhaps the most profound impact of this blog has been the poetry. This I could not have predicted.

During COVID, the teachers who gathered here wrote poetry that became, in many ways, an oral history of that time—an archive of grief, exhaustion, adaptation, and survival. In fact, now part of a university, we had support to create an oral history project that now holds the records of over 40 teachers from across the country.

Teachers who participated in the oral history project have since published collaborative books free for teachers (I had to learn how to make a website store that didn’t ask for money) and many, many other books,  workshops, and presentations, offering not just individual voices but a collective testament to the role of writing in sustaining educators. And this work has propelled advocacy for poetry writing in schools.

Opportunities & Possibilities: Moving from “Me” to “We”

For the poetry writing events to thrive, people needed to not just participate but also lead—offering prompts, writing alongside one another, responding to each other’s work. Ethical ELA had to evolve into a space where multiple voices could coexist, where guest posts weren’t just occasional but integral.

My role is now, more than anything, a coordinator or facilitator. I don’t make many decisions without consulting our community, seeking their counsel, and valuing their input and vision. I send a lot of emails and host open Zoom listening sessions. The Open Write was one of those decisions. After April 2020, teachers wanted to stay connected through poetry, so we launched a monthly open writing beginning the third Saturday of each month. This is still going strong.

And through it all, we made a decision: we would never monetize this space.

No ads. No membership fees. No cost for resources or books.

This site was never about profit. It was—and remains—a space for teachers to write, to share, and to be in community with one another. That kind of commitment to openness and accessibility isn’t always easy, but it is, I believe, what has made this space what it is today.

The Lessons: The Power of Relationships and Capacity

As an introvert and a quiet, private person, this website has been a paradoxical social lifeline for me. In fact, in many ways, it has been a literal lifeline. What a surprise it has been to discover the possibilities of friendship in this digital space. What a privilege to be able to call so many of the readers dear friends. What a joy to be in community through words. What a gift to be of use to others.

What I  have learned from running this blog for a decade, is this: relationships matter, and even the most profound connections can be held in the sharing of a poem and a gentle response that shows our words have landed on someone’s heart. And all this without ever meeting one another physically. Although, I will say that many of us have met in person at various conferences. We so enjoyed writing poetry alongside one another.

Looking ahead, I hope this site continues to be a place where teachers can write poetry, share classroom stories, and find community.

In the next ten years, I will retire. Ha. I have no idea if websites will even be a thing. The teachers I mentor now—those just beginning their careers—will be seasoned veterans. The educational landscape will continue to shift: book bans, DEI efforts, and debates over the very future of public education. Will there still be a Board of Education? Will we still have teacher preparation programs as we know them? Will public schools still exist in their current form?

I do not know. But I do know this: we will write poetry through it all.

We will tell our stories.

We will laugh.

We will mourn.

And, as always, we will teach.

This blog has never just been about me. It has been about us—the teachers, the writers, the thinkers, the community that has formed here. I hope that continues for another decade and beyond.

To those who have been here from the beginning: thank you.

To those just finding us now: welcome.

We have stories to tell. And I hope you will be part of them.

The Celebration Continues

Over the next year, Ethical ELA will publish on most Mondays celebratory and reflective posts from our readers and writers. We hope you will follow along and engage in conversation about how we have come to understand what ethical ELA means for us and how we continue to navigate the sociopolitical climate in education.

And we will continue the monthly Open Write though now three days a month — the third Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Jessica Wiley, Magaret Simon, Barb Edler, Mo Daley, Jennifer Guyor Jowett, Anna J. Small Roseboro, Denise Krebs, Kim Johnson, Gayle Sands, Leilya Pitre, Glenda Funk, and Stacey Joy will be organizing the monthly writing experiences over the next year. We are grateful for the collective work that will bring new perspectives and ideas to this space.

Verselove will continue as well. Please volunteer here if you’d like to host one of the 30 days of poetry for April 2026.