This post is aimed at those of us who teach. Teachers Pay Teachers is a convenient site for teachers to access a wide variety of resources to use in the classroom.

Many resources are available for free, and can be save you some time in creating new activities. During my student-teaching I was given the advice to “beg, borrow, and steal” while I create lessons and plan curriculum. While I am not condoning stealing, the Teachers Pay Teachers (TpT) site offers a one-stop shop for ideas and resources.

Many teachers I know have heard of TpT, and some teachers have purchased resources. This is a great time savings as a teacher prepares their next lesson.

The main reason I am writing a post about TpT is to encourage other teachers to Sell on TpT. Signing up is free and you can put as much or as little into your ‘Store’ as you would like. I have only uploaded documents I already had created for my classes. There are some teachers who dedicate a great deal of time to creating resources, or even full curriculum.

Since the seller sets the price of their resources, some people have created a full class worth of material and sold the resources for over $200 per download!

Many of us teachers create our own resources as part of our job, so why not profit from the extra work we have put into our resources? For instance, I have only uploaded documents I already had created for class. So far I have had $20.41 automatically deposited into my personal checking account. I did not need to promote, track, or process any sales. Also, aside from the money, I have helped other teachers get needed materials to help them in their own class.

With the free seller’s account, TpT does take a pretty substantial portion of each sale. This being said, it is quite nice to randomly sell a resource and then have the amount automatically direct deposited each month a sale is made. For me this has worked out to a very small amount of extra cash, but since I had already made the resources, it feels like getting paid extra. For me, something is better than nothing!

I have suggested to several colleagues that they set up a seller’s account because the materials they have created are worthy of being shared. Common replies are that they don’t think their work is good enough to sell, or that they don’t want to worry about maintaining a storefront.

As a teacher I ask my students to share their thoughts and their work. For many students this is uncomfortable, but it is a valuable skill to be able to overcome the little voice in your head that says “you’re not right” or “your work isn’t good enough”. For my self-conscious students sharing their work is difficult but can lead to important revision and learning.

I feel it is important that we as teachers are willing to do the same. Push ourselves to create resources worth sharing. If we are doing less than that, are the resources even useful in our class? After creating resources worth sharing we should do just that, share the resources. Using a site like TpT to sell your resources is a way to reward youself for some of this extra work.

I think all teachers should sell through TpT. For those of you teachers who are really creative, and have the tools to create engaging resources, or even Google Apps, I strongly recommend you check out TpT and set up a seller’s account to make some extra cash for the work you are already doing. Peace.