Do you have classroom aids, lesson plans, or innovative ideas you want to share with other teachers? Would you like to earn extra income at the same time?
Welcome to TeachersPayTeachers.com, a virtual marketplace where educators can buy and sell lesson plans. Could materials you’ve created for your own students appeal to other educators? The answer is Yes.
In the September 5, 2015 New York Times article, A Sharing Economy Where Teachers Win, writer Natasha Singer talked with Laura Randazzo, an English teacher from Pleasanton, California. Randazzo created a fictional character work sheet called “Whose Cell Phone Is This?” with questions like:
“What kind of tunes do you think Iago, the villain in William Shakespeare’s Othello, would listen to if he had an iPhone?”
A few years ago Randazzo started posting items priced around $1 on the Teachers site. Her “Whose Cell Phone Is This?” worksheet has now sold more than 4,000 copies. But she didn’t stop there. One of her best-selling items is a full-year collection of high school grammar, vocabulary, and literature exercises which has generated sales of about $100,000.
Now that’s real money.
What started as a hobby turned into a business for Randazzo. Founded in 2006, TeachersPayTeachers speeds up lesson-pre work by monetizing exchanges between teachers and enabling them to connect with far-flung colleagues.
That’s entrepreneurship. Some call it teacherpreneurship.
So how large a market is there for this? Huge. Check out Thursday’s blogpost.
