Credit: Courtesy of Traci Clausen

"Morning Wakeup" is 1 of the tools Traci Clausen, who teaches at Chaparral Uncomplicated School in Chino Hills, sells to other teachers through an online marketplace.

Credit: Courtesy of Traci Clausen

"Morning Wakeup" is one of the tools Traci Clausen, who teaches at Chaparral Elementary Schoolhouse in Chino Hills, sells to other teachers through an online market place.

In today'due south wired earth, it'south no longer completely out of the question to teach 4th grade and get rich.

With blogs, tweets, brands and online stores, tens of thousands of K-12 teachers are selling lesson plans and other classroom aids they've created over the Internet – with many reaping large profits in the process. The practice, at to the lowest degree a decade old, has boomed in the past 2 years, cheers largely to proliferating online platforms and a hunger amongst teachers for classroom tools aligned with the new Common Core standards.

"We teachers have had to figure out on our own how to update our own materials," said Jenn Larson, a former 4th-grade instructor at Jackson Simple School in El Dorado Hills, just east of Sacramento. Larson, a 20-year veteran teacher, retired from her task in June after more than tripling her almanac income selling classroom resources under her online proper name "The Teacher Next Door." Among her many popular products, with summit ratings from thousands of reviewers, is a $6 ready of  Common Core-oriented worksheets, games and job cards geared to helping 4th- and 5th-class students discover the "principal idea" in a nonfiction document.

In California, as in many other parts of the nation, some teachers and curriculum experts have been fretting that the $three billion textbook industry has been dull in coming up with materials they need to help students meet the Mutual Core standards. Oft scrambling to make practise, teachers have energized two fast-growing online markets: 1 offer free lesson plans and other materials through popular sites such as Khan Academy and EngageNY.org, and another in which some teachers are using their own funds to purchase products while others are reaping profits.

"Teachers are particularly looking for Common Core curriculum, and we've got it," said TeachersPayTeachers CEO Adam Freed.

A national survey concluding year past the Instruction Calendar week Research Centre showed that teachers were deeply skeptical of traditional curriculum publishers' claims that they were providing materials aligned with the Mutual Cadre; teachers said they had much more than faith in those produced by fellow teachers. Fewer than 4 in 10 said they trusted the publishing industry, versus nigh ix in 10 who trusted other teachers.

A dozen teachers selling curriculum materials and other classroom resources with the current manufacture leader, TeachersPayTeachers, have at present earned more than $ane meg each through online commerce, said the company's CEO, Adam Freed. Many other "teacher-authors," every bit the visitor calls them, have seen their salaries supplemented or even dwarfed by online income from a wide range of classroom resources offered at relatively low prices. Well-nigh of the teacher-authors have given themselves online names, including  "Math Mojo, "Smart Chick," "Hello Literacy," and "Miss Kindergarten Beloved".

Larson said she was divorced five years ago, and with two kids in higher was barely scraping by on her teacher's salary earlier she started to sell her wares. "In my start calendar month I made $fifty and I thought maybe eventually I could brand plenty to pay my mortgage. A few months later, I could practice that and more than."

TeachersPayTeachers, which was founded in 2006 by Paul Edelman, a New York City high schoolhouse teacher, has doubled in size since 2013. The number of products it offers for sale has increased from 750,000 to i.5 million in that aforementioned time. Edelman sold the site to the publishing and media visitor Scholastic Inc., only later bought it back after it was in danger of folding during the recession. Revenues climbed from $45 million to $78 meg between 2022 and 2014, with some 50,000 teacher-authors at present selling materials to roughly 3 million buyers.

"The Common Core has been a push and driver," said Freed, the sometime CEO of Etsy.com, an online market place where hobbyists sell handmade products. "Teachers are especially looking for Mutual Core curriculum, and we've got it."

TeachersPayTeachers, while far and away the biggest acquirement earner, isn't alone in this field. "We are Teachers," "Teacher's Notebook," and "BetterLesson.com" all offering teacher-produced educational materials, either for free or at minimal toll.

Some of the materials available on the TeachersPayTeachers website.

Credit: Courtesy of TeachersPayTeachers

Some of the materials available on the TeachersPayTeachers website.

Moreover, the fast-growing commerce got a major heave on Aug. xx, with the launch of a new and international online marketplace, TES.com, run by TES Global, which claims vii.3 one thousand thousand registered users. The visitor, which bills itself as the world's largest online community of teachers, offers job postings and a weekly magazine. In 2012, together with the American Federation of Teachers, it launched "ShareMyLesson.com," a free trading site for teacher-made educational resource.

In contrast, the new TES site is turn a profit-oriented. Teachers may charge whatever they encounter fit for their materials, and Rob Grimshaw, the company's CEO, said that at least initially they may keep 100 percent of the acquirement.

"Nosotros're on the cusp of something that could be transformational to teaching," said Grimshaw, who agreed with Freed that the Common Core has contributed to the surge in demand.

"Teachers are being asked to switch to a different prepare of standards in a relatively short time," he said. "We're hearing from them that a lot of materials they're using aren't fully adapted to the Common Core, but that they accept to teach to the new standards anyway. And then they're turning in increasing numbers to resources that are on the Web."

They're turning, in other words, to teachers like Traci Clausen, a top seller on the TeachersPayTeachers site.

"Virtually teachers I know have a second task – this is just my 2nd job," said the 1st-class teacher at Chaparral Elementary School in Chino Hills, in San Bernardino County. Clausen declined to disclose how much she has fabricated from selling educational tools, such as her $xv.20 "Morning Wakeup" handbook for math and English review. Her online store, "Dragonflies in First," has a height-level rating from nearly 10,500 reviewers.

"What sells the best are my planners," Clausen said. "Before I was a teacher, I worked as a comptroller for small companies, and got very skillful at existence organized. Now with the Common Cadre and people trying to figure out how to teach all the standards, the yr-long planner is a big striking."

Clausen said the online commerce has added excitement to the profession "that quite honestly was dying in California, where we have the highest number of kids in each classroom and a lot of teachers stressed out."

Nonetheless, non anybody is rejoicing over the trend – especially when teachers are by and large underwriting it themselves.

"The real scandal is that teachers are provided with such poor materials that they demand to pay out of their own pockets for stuff like this," said Eric Bettinger, an associate professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Pedagogy, who has researched the growth of online educational offerings. "I also find it pretty surprising, given all the materials that are available for costless online."

Jackson Elementary Schoolhouse principal Michelle Miller said that while she was sorry to see Larson retire, she wasn't worried that many teachers would follow her out of the classroom.

"Technology has opened upwardly a whole new globe for teachers to share ideas, but I certainly don't remember this is a threat to the profession," Miller said. "It takes a special teacher to write curriculum. It's not everyone'south forte, and it is very time-consuming. At that place will be some unique individuals willing to practise it, but I don't recollect this will be a huge trend."

Clausen, the Chino Hills instructor, agreed that the time investment may be daunting to most teachers thinking about making a major investment in marketing materials. She said she routinely spent eight to 10 hours a week just attention to her website, blog and presence on Facebook and Instagram.

Moreover, some teachers say they remain wedded to the ideal of collaborating with their colleagues to produce materials for gratuitous.

Caitlin Alastra, a 6th-course English language arts and history teacher at Longfellow Middle Schoolhouse in Berkeley, said she had enjoyed working with two other teachers, in math and English language arts, at her schoolhouse last yr to create a Common Core-aligned interdisciplinary unit about fast food. With teaching and practice provided by a twelvemonth-old program called Teachers Advancing Common Core Learning, Alastra then posted the lesson plan, which included video clips and excerpts from books, on a gratis site called OER Commons, a digital library run by the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Instruction in Half Moon Bay.

"Information technology never occurred to me to practise information technology for money," Alastra said. "Information technology just felt like role of the natural sharing that goes on all the time with teachers at school."

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