Our annual Contest Calendar is probably the single most powerful thing we publish all year. Teachers tell us they plan their classes around our challenges, and tens of thousands of teenagers across the globe participate by creating narratives, profiles, opinion pieces and reviews, podcasts, videos, illustrations and photo essays.
For us, these contests are an honor and a joy to host. We love learning from young people — about what moves them and makes them mad, what intrigues and confuses and delights and defines them.
Every summer, we tinker with our offerings to keep them fresh, and we’ve made some significant changes this time around.
To start, in August, The Learning Network will celebrate its 25th anniversary, and we’re marking it by running our first-ever challenge that is open to our full audience, both teachers and teenagers. We hope together you’ll help us tell a rich story about what it’s like to be in high school in 2023.
Like educators all over, we’ve been spurred by the advent of generative artificial intelligence to make creative tweaks to our offerings. This year, we’re putting more emphasis on the parts of the composing process that are, well, human. A glance at the 10 descriptions below might show you that elements like voice, point of view, reflection, making connections and building community are more central than ever. We’ve invented new contests and updated old ones, and we’ll be emphasizing process as well as product throughout. We also have a full writing curriculum to help support this work.
If you need a little encouragement to participate, we recommend two pieces. Students might start with “‘I Was Enough’: How I Stopped Trying to Sound Smart and Found My Genuine Writing Voice,” by a teenager who reflects on how our competitions helped her grow. If you are a teacher, our reader-submitted 10 Reasons to Send Student Work Out Into the World might be compelling — especially, perhaps, reason number 10.
To download a PDF version of this contest calendar, click here. Questions? Scroll to the bottom of this post to learn more, write to us at [email protected] or post a comment here.
Aug. 16-Oct. 4, 2023
What can you show or tell us that might help explain what it’s like to be an educator or a student in a secondary school right now?
We’re inviting you to contribute to a collective portrait of what it means to be in high school today, told by those living it.
All who work in any capacity in a secondary school, or are students over 13 in one, are invited to document, reflect and express themselves on any aspect, big or small, of their experience there. We want to know what’s hard, but we also want to know where and how you find meaning and joy.
As with our original Coming of Age contest — the blueprint for this effort — you can submit writing or images, audio or video. You can send us artifacts, such as photos from your camera roll, or create something new. And you can work alone or in a group, with others your age or across ages, roles and even schools. Each submission must be accompanied by a short artist’s statement.
Here are the contest rules and submission form, and here are 15 questions and a step-by-step guide that can help you brainstorm ideas.
Update, Jan. 4: Winners have been announced!
Oct. 4-Nov. 1, 2023
Can you tell a meaningful and interesting true story from your life in just 100 words? That’s the challenge we posed to teenagers last fall with our 100-Word Personal Narrative Contest, a storytelling form popularized by Modern Love’s Tiny Love Stories. The answer, we discovered, was a resounding yes, so we’re bringing it back for Year 2.
Here are this year’s rules and guidelines. For more inspiration, read the work of last year’s winners, or follow this step-by-step guide for participating.
Update, Jan. 17: Winners have been announced!
Nov. 1-Dec. 6, 2023
Review a book, movie, restaurant, album, theatrical production, video game, dance, TV show or art exhibition, with advice from New York Times critics to help.
Update, April 2: Winners have been announced!
Feb. 14-March 20, 2024
Inspired by the immersive New York Times series Where We Are, which focuses on young people and the spaces where they create community, we invite students to work alone or with others to make photo essays about the communities that interest them.
You can document any kind of offline community you like and feature people of any age. Then tell us about it by sending six to eight images with captions and a short introduction.
Here are the rules and guidelines. Our step-by-step guide will walk you through the process, and our writing prompt can help you come up with an original topic.
Feb. 28-March 27, 2024
Produce a 15-second video about the meaning of one of our recent Words of the Day.
Here are the rules and guidelines, which are the same as last year’s except for one detail: You can work only with words published in our W.O.T.D. column between June 1, 2023, and Feb. 28, 2024.
For inspiration, take a look at the work of past winners.
March 13-May 1, 2024
Our Student Editorial Contest ran for a decade, and we received truly extraordinary work, but it’s time for a refresh. This year, we’re asking you to draw on the same skills and passions to make your case, but this time in the form of an open letter.
An open letter is a published letter of protest or appeal usually addressed to an individual, group or institution but intended for the general public. Think of the many “Dear Taylor Swift” open letters you can find online and on social media: Sure, they’re addressed to Ms. Swift, but they’re really a way for the writer to share opinions and feelings on feminism, or ticket sales, or the music industry, or … the list goes on.
As you might already know if you’ve read Martin Luther King’s famous Letter From Birmingham Jail, an open letter is a literary device. Though it seems on the surface to be intended for just one individual or group, and therefore usually reads like a personal letter (and can make readers feel they are somehow “listening in” on private thoughts), it is really a persuasive essay addressed to the public. This recent letter signed by over 1,000 tech leaders about the dangers of A.I., this funny 2020 letter addressed to Harry and Meghan, and this video letter from young Asian-Americans to their families about Black Lives Matter are all examples of the tradition.
As we have for 14 years now, we’ll be asking you to tell us what got your attention in The Times and why. But this year, each week we’ll invite you to tell us in a different way.
What will that look like? Every Friday for 10 weeks, we’ll post a new invitation, like this one — except that some weeks, we’ll ask for written responses, while other weeks, we’ll ask for video, audio or visual reactions of some kind.
We’ll publish more details in the spring, but the essence of the contest will stay the same, as will most of the rules and guidelines. For inspiration, take a look at the work of past winners and the related writing unit.
All School Year
Our Conversation Challenge for Weekly Current Events
We invite students to react to the news via our daily writing prompts, and each week, we publish a selection of their comments in a roundup for the world to read. We will also give a shout-out to new schools that join the conversation.
A Few More Details About Our Contests
Why do we run so many contests? We believe in student voice. We want young people to be active content creators, not just consumers. And we’re proud to offer places where they can create for an authentic audience of students, teachers, parents and other readers from around the world.
Here are more details:
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The work students send us is always considered by our staff and other experts, including Times journalists, as well as educators from partner organizations or professional practitioners in a related field. Judging for our contests is blind. That means we see only the entries themselves, not student names or schools, when we make our decisions.
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Winners get their work published on The Learning Network. Some may also be featured in a special section of the print New York Times.
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Anyone who submits to our contests retains the copyright for the work, even after we publish it.
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About two months after each contest closes, we’ll announce the winners, runners-up and honorable mentions. We usually celebrate dozens of students each time.
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On the day each contest begins, we will add a link here, on this page, to the contest announcement so students and teachers can submit entries. All contests except Summer Reading begin and end on Wednesdays.
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Students can enter as many contests as they want, but they can submit only one entry per contest. Our Summer Reading Contest, however, offers a fresh opportunity to submit each week for 10 weeks.
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Students’ entries must be original and fundamentally their own. An entry must not be published elsewhere at the time of submission, including in a school newspaper, on a radio station’s website or in a literary magazine.
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All of our contests are open to students around the world ages 13 to 19 who are in middle school or high school, except “What High School is Like in 2023,” which is open only to secondary students. College students cannot submit entries. However, high school students (including high school postgraduate students) who are taking one or more college classes can participate. Students attending their first year of a two-year CEGEP in Quebec can also participate. In addition, students ages 19 or under who have completed high school but are taking a gap year or are otherwise not enrolled in college can participate. Note: The children and stepchildren of New York Times employees are not eligible to enter these contests, nor are students who live in the same household as those employees.
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We can’t wait to see what you’ll create this year!
The Learning Network
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