TMI Flips English
  • Welcome!
  • Blog: Ion Lucidity
  • Thomasson Morris Instruction
  • Video
  • About Me
  • Contact Me

I Hate TeachersPayTeachers. Here's Why

3/28/2015

2 Comments

 
At CUE, I made an offer that if anyone wanted my curriculum, I would give it to them.

Now, I didn't have it in a sharable format, but that didn't stop me from making that promise.

So I spent my first day off in a while to put it all together - it was actually really helpful, since for the first time in almost my entire career, I know what I'm teaching next year, and it's the same class as this year.

Most of the people I work with in the #flipclass community share the feeling I have about TeachersPayTeachers: that it's exploitative of teachers who are desperately trying to improve their practice.  We work in an industry that has become so much more powerful by the huge amount of free education available on YouTube and the internet.  And yet we lock our work behind a paywall so we can make money off of other teachers?!

Why don't other people think that's as messed up as I do?

So here's my part to break the culture of pay-for-lesson-plans.  I'm sharing my entire course for free.  If something you've heard me talk about isn't there, please let me know and I'll add it.

A lot of what's on this document is my original work, but I've also used work from my colleagues, both in real life and on Twitter/Voxer.  That's another reason why I find TPT so repellant.  Ideas aren't birthed in our brains without being nurtured and fertilised by the work of others.  How can you monetise an idea that has come from hundreds of other people?

I urge you to give your curriculum away for free as well.  We get better when there is more collective learning that's open and available.

Enough talking.  Here's the google doc with my curriculum.

If you have ideas for improvement, please let me know.  If you see something you think we can collaborate on, please let me know.  My hope is that this is helpful for teachers trying to envision what (one version of) 1:1 flipped instruction can look like for real.
2 Comments
Jessica Pack link
4/5/2015 01:56:15 pm

Thanks for this post, Cheryl. I feel the same way regarding TPT, but I've always felt a bit guilty about it since many teachers look for ways to supplement income. In the end, I think sharing for free is about strengthening one another professionally. If we aren't doing that as teachers, then we leave the door open for someone else (such as a consulting firm or a textbook company) to try to do that for us.

Reply
Jen
7/28/2015 12:55:37 pm

I TOTALLY agree! I have never liked TPT. I tried it for a while because I like to give anything new a fair shake. I did not like the percentage that you earned on a unit or project that took you, the teacher, many hours to develop and test-drive. They seem to take advantage of the confusion created by the Common Core and few, available programs to implement it. I see so much paper "trash" printed out from TPT and plastered all over classroom walls with no point or purpose. I just don't get it. "Exploitative" is a good descriptor. Also, I offer my units for free with colleagues.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    A completely incomplete record of three years spent flipping my high school English classes with my cross-country collaborative partner, Andrew Thomasson. But after a decade in high school, I made the switch to a new gig: flipping English and History for 6th graders in Tiburon, CA.

    Picture

    RSS Feed

    Follow Me On Twitter!

    Tweets by @guster4lovers

    Archives

    October 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012

    Categories

    All
    American Literature
    Andrew Thomasson
    Background
    Blank White Page
    Cheesebucket Posse
    Coflip
    Collaboration
    Common Core Standards
    Creativity
    Crystal Kirch
    Curriculum
    Editing In Camtasia
    Essay Exposition Class
    Explore Flip Apply
    Explore-flip-apply
    First Week Of School
    #Flipclass
    Flipcon13
    Flipping
    Genius Hour
    Grading
    Humanities
    Ion Lucidity
    June School
    Karl Lindgren Streicher
    Kqed Do Now
    Language Of Humour
    Literature
    Live Response
    Mastery
    Metafilter
    Nerdfighteria
    Ninja News
    Patterning
    Procrastination
    Professional Development
    Puppets
    Reading Journal Videos
    Reflection
    Resiliency Project
    Sam Patterson
    San Francisco Stories
    Showme
    Spring Semester 13
    Student Post
    Success
    Technology
    Tfios
    The Beginning
    The Mess
    @thomasson_engl
    Tired
    Today
    Today's Meet
    Troy Cockrum
    Twitter
    Ubuntu
    Video
    White Blank Page Project
    Why We Read
    Youtube

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.