Education meets technology in a website founded in 2006, TeachersPayTeachers.com. Education also meets Entrepreneurship.
As written in the September 5, 2015 New York Times article, A Sharing Economy Where Teachers Win, to date $175 million has been paid out by the site’s company owner to teacher-authors. The site takes a 15% commission on most sales.
Is there a market? You decide:
- The site has about 1.7 million lesson plans, quizzes, worksheets, classroom activities, and other items available on any given day, typically for less than $5.
- In August of this year, more than one million teachers in the US downloaded material, including free and fee-based products, from the site.
- Nearly 300 teachers have earned more than $100,000 through the website.
There is an element of “Buyer Beware,” in that the buyer must assess the quality of products to be purchased. But there is also opportunity for teachers to take time to invest in new materials and strategies and reap some reward for their extra creativity and initiative.
Why the popularity of the site? School districts around the country have been introducing new learning objectives to meet Common Core state standards, for different grade levels. According to the New York Times article, “that has sent tens of thousands of educators to TeachersPayTeachers looking for lessons to reinforce particular math and reading standards—like the requirement that sixth graders and older students be able to delineate and evaluate the argument in a given text.”
Not all tools are digital. Some are “old-school” offline “active learning” techniques that other teachers perfected over the years in their classrooms.
Think about this. Teacherpreneurship. Mentorship, where new teachers learn from more experienced teachers. Ground-level teaching in a way no textbook can. Development of complementary tools like blogs and YouTube videos.
Teacherpreneurs = Unlimited Possibility.
