Privacy Policy

The Good Teachers exists to publish teachers' own words. That only works on trust, so this page describes exactly what we collect, where it goes, and what we will never do with it. It describes the site as it actually works today, not as it might work later.

The short version

• You can read the whole site without giving us anything.
• We ask for information only when you submit a story, and we ask for the least we can.
• We do not sell your data, we do not run ads, and we do not share your email with anyone outside our editorial team.
• “Anonymous” means your name is hidden from readers. It does not mean it is hidden from us — see below, because this is the one place people are most often misled.

What we collect when you submit a story

The submission form asks for:

• Your story — title, an optional summary, and the text itself.
• Your email address. Required. This is how our editors reach you about your story — to ask a question, suggest an edit, or tell you it is going live. It is never published and never shown to readers.
• Your name, school and location — optional, and published alongside your story unless you submit anonymously.
• Your confirmation that the story is yours to share and that you agree to editorial review.

What “anonymous” actually means

If you choose to submit anonymously, your name and location are not published, and they are not shown to readers anywhere on the site.

Your email address is still recorded, and our editors can still see it. We keep it because a story we cannot ask a question about is a story we cannot responsibly publish, and because you deserve a reply either way. If that is not acceptable to you, please do not submit — we would rather lose the story than mislead you about this.

Writing about your students

Classroom stories often involve children. Please change names and leave out details that could identify a particular student — a school plus a class plus a first name is often enough to identify someone. Our editors look for this, but you know your classroom and we do not. If we think a story identifies a child, we will ask you to change it before publishing.

What is stored on your own device

Some things stay in your browser and never reach us. We cannot read them, and clearing your browser data deletes them:

• Your draft, saved automatically as you write so you do not lose work — including any cover image you attach.
• Your reading list, if you bookmark stories.
• Your light or dark theme choice.

Cover images are, today, only ever stored in your own browser. We do not yet receive or store them at all. When that changes, this page changes with it.

Where your story is stored

Submitted stories are stored in a PostgreSQL database hosted by Neon in Singapore. The site itself is hosted by Vercel and served from Mumbai. This means your information is processed outside India. We are telling you because you have a right to know where your words physically live, not because we are asked to bury it in a footnote.

Who else is involved

• Vercel — hosting. Their servers keep standard request logs, which include IP addresses, as every web server does.
• Neon — the database described above.
• Google Analytics — if enabled, this tells us how many people visit and which stories are read. It sets cookies and sends Google information about your visit. It is not used for advertising, and we do not send it your email or the contents of your story.

Fonts are served from our own domain rather than fetched from Google, so simply reading the site does not tell Google you were here.

What we do not do

• We do not sell or rent your information to anyone.
• We do not run advertising or advertising trackers.
• We do not send marketing email. There is no mailing list.
• We do not have user accounts or passwords yet, so there are no login credentials to lose.

How long we keep things

Published stories are kept as long as they are published — the point of an archive is that it lasts. Submissions that are rejected, and the email addresses attached to them, are kept only as long as we need them to explain the decision, and are deleted on request.

Your rights

You can ask us to show you what we hold about you, correct it, delete it, or unpublish a story you have had second thoughts about. Write to hello@thegoodteachers.in and we will act on it. You do not need to give a reason to have your own story taken down.

If you submitted anonymously, tell us the story title and the email you used, so we can find it.

Changes to this page

When the site starts doing something new with your information — storing cover images, adding accounts — this page is updated at the same time, and the date at the top changes. We will not quietly widen what we collect.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or anything that reads wrong here: hello@thegoodteachers.in.

See also our Terms & Conditions, which cover who owns a published story.