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Public School Teachers Selling Lesson Plans Online
theodp writes "Thousands of teachers are using websites like Teachers Pay Teachers and We Are Teachers to cash in on a commodity they used to give away, selling lesson plans online for exercises as simple as M&M sorting and as sophisticated as Shakespeare. While some of this extra money is going to buy books and classroom supplies, the new teacher-entrepreneurs are also spending it on dinners out, mortgage payments, credit card bills, vacation travel and even home renovation, raising questions over who owns material developed for public school classrooms."
The teacher owns the material, it is they who develops it and in no way has to do with the schools.
I fail to see how this raises any questions. The teachers put effort into developing a lesson plan and deserve to do whatever they wish with that lesson plan. I work at a coffee shop and from what I've seen and talked about with the teachers that regularly spend time there, they don't do lesson plans on the clock. It's something they do mostly outside of school.
Plus, teachers don't make a whole lot as it is. If they want to sell their expertise at putting together effective lesson plans, more power to them. In fact, I prefer this system over the traditional "do as the book provides" because it seems to the major text book publishers care more about milking schools for money than actually teaching anything. With a system like this, at least the money helps other teachers.
If teachers don't have enough money for school supplies, then we need higher taxes. Unfortunately, these days with people having children later as well as a significant minority of Americans who are very, VERY against the entire idea of humans having children (without a license from the government of course i.e. eugenics), it's really hard to push tax increases through.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
First they're going to sell the lesson plans like they are now. Then as it becomes more popular, the supply will grow and price will drop. Then the plans will basically be free, and there won't be enough revenue to worry about. Teachers everywhere will have access to better materials, which will help the children learn better. Except that instead the school districts are going to say "No, that's my money too!" They will shut this down as it starts to take off, and the teachers will be no better off than they are today.
I suspect the majority of decent lesson plans are prepared using time well beyond what teachers are actually paid for. It's good to see them rewarded (at least to some degree) for the work, though it doesn't look like the majority of teachers are pulling in much.
If not explicitly spelled out in a contract, then the IP rights are determined by the laws of the state. Most of the time, these tend to error on the side of the individual rather than the organization.
This problem has been given plenty of exercise by coders and network admins, I doubt it's really a question anymore.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
It makes no sense for teachers to be selling lesson plans. I see no legal problems with it, but it cannot possibly be a good way for teachers to collaborate. Ideas should be freely shared. Unfortunately, if teachers are not paid enough, they are going to be inclined to do things like what is described in the article which not work to maximize their effectiveness.
One teacher in the article mentions the problem of being credited for free work, which is ridiculous: attaching a list of names and e-mail addresses of contributors to a work has worked for decades for software. I fail to see why lesson plans would be fundamentally different in that respect.
The teachers developed workable lesson plans. Unless things have radically changed since I last taught, the time to develop lesson plans is probably not built into the schedule. You do that on your own time, or in a very short time period like a 30 minute 'planning period'. If the government would like to own these lesson plans then perhaps they should consider paying for the time used to develop them.
They've worked for it, so they have every right to do what they want. If a teacher writes a book and sells it via a big name publisher, it's legit, but if they do it online, it's not? Some of the teachers who taught me had written material that were way better than the books that were recommended for us. If they make a living out of it, why not? Teaching is a low paying job. Might as well make money on the side. But, as the article says, if people are buying preschool lessons, then it's just lazy parents. Do you really need external lessons to teach your kid to be good at preschool?
That there's no question as to who owns the materials, and teachers freely gave them away in the past. It was obvious that they belonged to the teachers. If they had belonged to the school, the teacher would have no right to give them away.
Fast forward to today... some teacher decides to sell theirs instead of giving it away. Suddenly leading some school officials to raise questions over who owns material developed for public school classrooms.
What's happening is greed and jealously at its finest: as soon as a teacher is perceived to possibly be profiting off a certain lesson plan, the school officials want to find any means they can to get their mits on the action, either to demand a cut, take the profits wholesale, or penalize the teachers, so they aren't profiting compared to the school officials.
Pure greed at play.
Teachers aren't paid to make lesson plans: they don't draft or write them in the classroom while they're teaching. Lesson plans aren't required to do the job of teaching. Although some type of basic outline might be required, it's distinct from the detailed lesson plans teachers develop.
They require a lot of work to develop into anything useful that someone else would want. Drafting these plans is generally done at home, or on break, using the teacher's own resources, while they aren't teaching: teachers need to plan ahead to do an effective job, and sometimes collaborate with other teachers possibly in the local community, but possibly quite remote distances away.
While they use the lesson plans at whatever school they teach at, it doesn't mean the plans are developed specifically for a certain classroom, or specifically for a public school classroom.
Nor does this imply any right of ownership to the school.
It's like hiring some guy at geeksquad to fix your computer, and when they do it, insisting you own the rights to the guy's personal notes/cheat sheet he developed regarding what things to check in what order, etc, etc.
Essentially: your employee's personal plans that they developed for their own purposes, to help them do the job you hired them to do better.
You don't own those, unless you made developing those plans a condition of their employment, part of the exchange of goods, and paid them for all time and resources spent in developing those plans.
this is probably wrong on a couple of levels. First, teachers don't really have money to spend. And second, at every job I've had the employers own my work. If the teachers were doing things above and beyond what was required to do their job then maybe.
Work Safe Porn
I am shocked no one has made an open competitor. I do have trouble understanding who the market is? It is other public school teachers or homeschoolers? If it is other public school teachers, than it is money out situation for them. Probably their own money too. It makes much more sense for the homeschooled. However, a la carte lesson plans would add up fast!
Seems like a cheap way to pay teachers more without raising taxes.
IP issues aside, the state benefits because they gain the teacher's expertise and thus can provide education (something you were going to be spending regardless) and the added incentive that teachers can earn more money in their position.
As long as a student who buys nothing from the teacher is not disadvantaged anyway compared to a student who does. If the teacher is also unable to charge for time spent whilst at school, then it sounds like the perfect market solution to me.
If I'm paid to write software for a company I can't also resell the source code outside of work for my personal gain. I assume the same logic would apply teachers and lesson plans although I guess it depends on the employment contract.
...better distribution of funds. The majority of money for schools is put into special ed instruction which leaves scraps for everyone else. The public school system is a money pit. Whenever funds are cut the administration inevitably takes it out on teachers to extort tax payers. If people would stop giving into that game and demand that schools make better use of the money they do have our eduction system would be better off.
Work Safe Porn
Lesson plans meet the definition of "work for hire" under US copyright laws and as such are owned by the school system or municipality unless there are express agreements giving the rights to the teachers. Teachers are employees and not third party contractors, such as many programmers, and lesson plans are within the scope of a teacher's employment. Lesson plans are the property of the school. State law is only relevant if it expressly gives the rights to the lesson plans to the teachers. Otherwise, the plans belong to the schools.
I know the bad ones copy the lesson plans out of the back of the text and are headed out the door as soon as their union obligated hours are done. The good ones spend countless hours of their own time at home, on the weekends, during winter, spring and summer break, creating new and innovative ways to engage their students.
The best of the best pass those ideas down to other teachers, through workshops and other means.
But, I cant fault someone for wanting to get paid for there time.
M&M's Sort You!
Lessons plans are not with-in the scope of a teachers job. a teacher can show up and read from the book, assign from the book and give the state mandated test and that IS all we pay for.
If you disagree with me, then how come a rotation of substitutes can perform these task for a semester and parent cannot claim the school negligent?
Given the exorbitant, outrageous, and staggering prices that even first year post-secondary text books sell for, this doesn't seem worth a moment's thought.
Once you've figured out how to price text books about the same as a best seller hard-cover book instead $100-200 a copy, I'll be willing to worry about teachers selling lesson plans.
Three Squirrels
Patenting lesson plans and then licensing them seems the next logical step. Has anyone tried this yet?
After all, if a student earns a grade for their own unique academic paper, shouldn't the teacher be required to earn their dollar for their own academic lesson plans or be penalized for it?
Reducing education to a financial transaction either needs to work both ways, or work neither way. If the teacher can buy a lesson plan and tailor it to their classroom, a student should be able to buy a paper and tailor it to their specific need too. It's an absurd example, but one that illustrates that all parties in education need to adapt to each other and not reduce things to a dollar sign and marginalize society's most important equalizer.
Second (maybe) only to the dysfunctional health care system in America is the terrible state of its primary and secondary school systems. We spend far more than Asian (and European? I don't know) countries on education and get results that are the embarrassment of the world.
Why? One reason is undoubtedly America's anti-intellectual climate (rock stars not rocket scientists get laid). This is something that may only change after China demonstrates in a big way how they might dominate the 21 century (like Sputnik). The other reason is the TEACHER'S UNIONS. The stranglehold they have against reform and removing incompetent teachers is legendary, I won't even bother going into how hard it is to fire a teacher in most places. The importance of good teachers towards improving scores is well documented; a recent studied said if the top 25% of teachers were working in the worst schools the racial test score gap would vanish.
Once upon a time, the unions performed a useful function by preventing arbitrary firings of teachers on a principal's whim. Now the pendulum has swung far far the other away; the unions, the political power they represent and the money they spend are the single largest factor denying a good education to America's kids. If America wants to have a fighting chance of not giving up its leadership role in the world this is a problem that MUST be solved.
I'm surprised that at this point the discussion no comment pointing out the similarities with Open Source Software has been modded up to a 3 or higher.
Some of these teachers are making money on these lesson plans, while others only want credit but don't have a good mechanism to attribute credit (one teacher mentioned in the article says one of her lesson plans that she gave away was so popular it made it to another school district but had no attribution). This stuff might as well be open source software programs for young minds, the parallels are so close.
While the profit motive is all fine and good and, from the tone of the article, is being met by multiple websites rooted in the old copyright-based fee-for-distribution model, what the rest of the teachers need is a "sourceforge for teachers." A set of tools to easily enable the creation, modification and distribution of lesson plans for free with the option of significant collaborative participation.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Why would a teacher be forced to give up his/her lesson plans for free? That would be communism in blatant terms. Because no matter how good or bad the lesson plan is, the teacher gets the same reward - nothing.
On the other hand, having to pay for it produces an economy of quality. The people who develop the better (or well, better known) lesson plan will be given an incentive to keep doing so. The system works as long as there is very little policing of these norms and that society as a whole profits from this "sale" of intellectual property (finally, a place where I can use that for real).
This might seems strange coming from a student brought of socialist kerala, opposer of DRM and sw patents. But here's where I draw the line, I do not object to the sale of lesson plans. I do object to policing of the system to prevent fair use of it (which is a whole tarkin effect in itself).
Plus it is definitely a constructive sale, if you can build something up in your work and sell it so that *another student* gets a better education, then it counts as a win-win situation as far as the end user (i.e student) is concerned.
So good for the teachers who write them and good for the teachers who use 'em. This is just meta-textbook 2.0 in action :)
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
oh no... teachers who make lesson plans are selling them?!?!?
I can't believe it, next their going to ask to get paid for teaching students. What is the world coming to?!?!?
That's not true, most courses in the US use canned lesson plans that the district pays a small fortune to obtain. My father is a school administrator (and has been for districts large and small) and I can tell you a significant portion of the budget goes to buying lesson plans*.
Put your dad on. I want to hear about these lesson plans they are buying.
I think there seems to be a huge disconnect in this discussion. There is a difference between "lesson plan" and "textbook." Your dad buys textbooks and workbooks. Those are not lesson plans. Those are the seeds of lesson plans.
Lesson plans are what the teacher does with those seeds and, in many cases, they have to supplement with stuff they've made themselves (to be honest, I'd love to work somewhere where I just follow some external lesson plan--I've never heard of such a place and again think you mean "textbook"). Teachers share this stuff around all the time, edit, and use as necessary. All these pay sites are doing is adding a little money to it, and as a teacher, I'm all for it. I don't mind kicking a little dough to a compatriot-in-arms for their good ideas, and I might even throw some stuff up there myself.
Now, I am a university professor, so my situation is different, but if anyone asked me to sign an IP waiver that said that whatever materials I made belonged to the school, I'd laugh and walk. That is my bread and butter. Teachers are free agents; we usually move around. If something happens and we need to change jobs, we're not re-inventing a 20-year-career; we're taking the stuff we made.
Hell, I take stuff I didn't make, but use. There's no controls on this stuff, and until it gets published (which is usually never), people do whatever they want.
At a meeting at my last school, the head of the department responded to a question about ownership of materials we were making for the department with this, "Well, those are all property of the university, obviously." I chortled, and I was sitting right next to him. He looked at me, shocked, and I said, "where did it say that in my contract?" This was about half a second before the room erupted in a mixture of scoffing, laughter, and loud complaining.
When the noise died down I said, "That's fine if that's what you want to do, but that is the kind of thing that would need to be stated explicitly in our contracts. There are two sides to that, of course. On the one hand, you'd be safe from anyone ever taking stuff they did here and publishing it, which might make it hard for you to use for free anymore, but on the other, well, I'm not making anything for any of my classes anymore, unless you pay me per lesson or something." No clause was ever added to the contract, and I am using a lot of the materials--some of which I didn't make--at my current job, edited for the new situation. There is no way that I could re-do those years of work while moving my career ahead. Some of that stuff is now in my permanent bag of tricks.
So, there's how it works, and I suspect your dad would agree with me. I'm pretty sure it's you who doesn't get it.
The knowledge teachers include in their lesson plans is not what's for sale here. It's the methodology teachers use to engage the students that is important.
If any teacher, public or private, wishes to take what's convenient, they can buy a ready made lesson plan, just add students. If they want to develop their own, well that's work now isn't it?
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
So it seems it's perfectly fine for state-employed teachers to sell each other lesson plans, but their unions continue to try and block access to the "teacher edition" of books for homeschooling parents.
I wonder if they'd try to block homeschool parents from posting their lesson plans online too.
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The GPL application you made last year belongs to your company.
It must be relicensed to the company, and you must desist your illegal distribution under GPL, BSD, whatever..
Your emails also belong to your company and not yourself. The company has every right to monitor your every keystroke, and make sure you are never compensated for them in any other way, including stealing your girlfriend/boyfriend and a new job..
As well as your chats, your useless conversations and papernotes full of blighted ideas.
Even your Slashdot posts are not yours, its made on company time, or during company employment.
In fact, you don't own anything, because you sold your soul when you accepted a job..
Luckily for you nobody really wants it, so you are free to go about your business as usual, for now, until we find a way to sell you off.
Why do we compensate authors for creative goods again? Why should anybody go out of their way to create something with such mentality?
I'm SO happy I'm not a teacher, although I know I could be a very good one in the fields of my expertise, and with my people skills. They are treated so crappy, I would NEVER ever want to be put in that position, EVER. In addition, they have to listen to people blathering about how much vacation they have and how much raise they are getting.. It's so sad the most important profession in our society, is the least respected. It sadly speaks volumes of our priorities as a society.
I think you misunderstand: People are different.
Students are at school to learn.
Teachers are only a facilitator for that to happen. You can even do away with the teachers, if that serves the purpose.
OTOH, if the purpose is not served, you might as well close down the schools.
Of course, a good teacher is the most important facilitator for proper learning, including learning how to learn, and how to cope in life in general.
I think that's what you're aiming at, not shooting at a way to make teacher's job easier while giving some other teachers monetary benefits.
You should instead be clamouring for higher pay for teachers and better work-conditions.
Quite honestly, as long as it helps improve the quality of education - and making them public plus opening competition via a marketplace is likely to do that - what the fuck do you care if someone profits? Have we dropped so low already that we're jealous of the winner, even in a win-win situation?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'd rather have the teachers teach our kids better and get fat, I mean FAT, bonuses, rather than peddling lesson plans for extra cash. The shit is seriously outta whack.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Point is, creating lesson plans is not what teachers are paid to do. It's outside the scope of their employment.It's just assumed they do it somehow, but the job description doesn't include it. Otherwise, they should be paid for the hours of creating those lesson plans, before anyone assumes copyright or any rights over their works.
I'm sure you are getting some pay for working overtime, depending either on your salary (a big one covering any "extra time") or agreement (overtime pay). I'm also sure, before you give over your rights to any company, you are pretty sure this is included in your work description or that company. Many teachers don't. It's just assumed they will create lesson plans, which often happens in their free time, even before they get employed at all.
This isn't some proprietary information regarding company secrets of the trade. This is lesson plans over public domain information, so no need to lock down. It's not the same as working on secret projects for an IT company, where certain information may not be revealed.
Anyways, "on company time" in your free time, doesn't strike a cord with me. If I develop a competing product on my own computer, and it's not included in the contract that I can't, then it's free market as far as I'm concerned.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
As a teacher in a relatively poorly funded and equipped school, I'd like to say "anyone who isn't a teacher or hasn't been a teacher at some point, STFU." But that'd be rather glib of me.
Suffice to say there are plenty of free lesson plans out there for those of us unwilling or unable to come up with our own. If a teacher finds a lesson plan that they feel is worth paying for, go for it. I personally wouldn't pay for a lesson that someone else wrote, but that's just me.
Until teachers are paid--not just paid, but respected--commensurate with the job they're doing, to wit: raising your dumbass kid while you bitch about your tax dollars, I don't see how anyone not in our shoes has any right to tell us how to make ends meet. There is a serious disjunct between what is expected of teachers by society and what many parents are willing to do at home to assure their child receives a worthwhile education.
...as simple as M&M sorting and as sophisticated as Shakespeare...
15th century TV? "Star crossed lovers" is sophisticated? I hope they're selling this crap so they can buy these poor kids a math book to share.
. . . . and frankly, have no issue with another teacher selling materials to another teacher. As others have pointed out, these plans and materials are developed outside of regular teaching hours. As a professional, you have every right to sell IP that you have developed on your own. Teachers have actually been doing it for years, and a few of the smaller materials companies were actually started by teachers putting together curriculum in their spare time, then taking it on the road. Marci Cook is perhaps the most well known (to elementary teachers) example, she has been selling math and language arts activities for years, and has developed a profitable business as a result. None of which was created in the classroom, I will add.
But to be honest, most of the stuff I have seen for sale could be developed by any teacher with a little bit of time. M&M math, anyone?
I personally share everything I develop with my colleagues at my grade level, and expect my colleagues to do the same. I like to think of it as Open Source education—sharing the best ideas with other teachers and planning lessons together really benefits your students.
How could a school I teach at claim ownership over this work? In my mind this would be like club owners claiming to own the rights to any music that is played at their venues.
That's the best analogy so far. The school is paying the teacher to teach students, and pays for some of the necessary equipment (books, projector, etc.), but the actual lesson is up to the judgment of the teacher. Some teachers will use suggested lesson plans from the workbooks, and some will take the time to make one that works better for them. If they have chosen to take the time to make a good plan, like a singer who took the time to write an original song, the employer benefits from better results, but has not paid for the right to sell the plan. The teacher was not hired as a lesson plan writer any more than the singer was hired as a song writer.
The idea that higher taxes are needed is purely ignorant of the problem. How can rural schools consistently spend less than many big cities per pupil yet turn out better educated students? It happens across the country.
The real money problems in public education are simple.
1. Non teaching positions, usually used to give jobs to friends and family of local lawmakers.
2. Overly generous pay to teachers with seniority without regard to ability
3. Over priced administrators.
4. Ridiculous retirement packages.
Did you notice anything about the list? Its all focused on who works there and not why they are there in the first place. Education has become a jobs program.
The reason its hard to push increases of taxes through is because most people are tired of it. Tired of seeing it wasted on the Federal level people naturally take it out where they can have effect. Tired of watching huge buildings named after living politicians instead of being used where it should be.
Tire of seeing threats of cutting police, fire, and teachers, when every little budget problem comes across instead of cutting non essential (crony employment jobs) and vote buying benefits programs.
Taxes are the last thing we need more of for this problem, but considering the state of education I can see how many would come to that conclusion, they were not taught to think
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
OK! I buy the idea that young teachers can benefit from having more experienced professionals providing them with good work material. BUT, in my opinion, the question that rises from this isn't weather it is ethical or not to have public school professors selling their material. What I am concerned about is if this material is really good! For instance, I've just created a seller account at TeachersPayTeachers, but I don't teach anything! I'm a Brazilian computer scientist! I agree that the intellectual property of these lesson plans belong to the teachers that produced them. And I belive that professionals that produce good quality material must be rewarded for doing that. I'm just worried with the possibility of having uncontrolled teaching material being sold (and used!) worldwide.
This is a great idea. The only thing I would add to it would be to open up the creation / modification of these plans a bit more. Like putting these lesson plans on some sort of wiki or something. Available lesson plans with optional elements for differing abilities (e.g. remedial history versus normal history versus AP history) would be a great compliment to something like OpenCourseWare. (Granted OCW is college material, but basic idea remains the same.)
for a bit more monIE. kind of randoidian, no?
I teach math and computer science at a public school. I have my own curriculum (more or less), which I haven't sold to anybody (yet). I'd like to have the option, though, which is why I only work on it when I'm not at work.
1. Teachers are overpaid babysitters. Esp in Urban districts.
2. Busing is probably the biggest single issue with lack of schools achieving any significant educational goals.
3. Teachers Unions and Tenure should be outlawed. Few Government employees get to strike.. yet every year, like clockwork, local Teachers Unions are picketing because they didn't get a 4-5% COLA or (HORRORS!) have a co-pay for health insurance!!!!
4. STATES MANDATE A HUGE PORTION OF THE SCHOOL YEAR.
What are all these wonderful, whimsical lesson plans going to go when they do not cover the State mandated topics?
I've been in 8 different school districts (public, private and DoD Contracted), large and small, 3 Universities. None of the 'lesson plans' significantly differed to the point of being memorable. Most of the teachers were adequate but most were simply regurgitating LAST YEARS plan. Ask a T/A is there is any 'lesson plan magic' going on year after year..... I never saw it.
I am not a teacher, nor did I benefit greatly from any of them. I did the minimums to pass and (C student) and still got into top Universities.
The only story here is that people are selling small works instead of big ones. And that fits the overall model we've seen in the last 15 years online. Buy a single instead of a CD. Buy a single key to replace one on a broken laptop keyboard (instead of a replacement.)
Well, now they're selling individual lesson plans, instead of an entire book of them.
Proof of these lesson plans available as books: http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Science-Success-Lesson-Grades/dp/1933531355/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258372050&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=science+lesson+plans&x=0&y=0
And these are only ones new enough to be on Amazon. I'm not in my office and don't feel like tunneling there to search WorldCat, but publishing lesson plans isn't new at all, and quite arguably is part of the scholarship of teaching.
Be careful of your thoughts; they could become words at any minute...
I'm glad this argument unfolded exactly as predicted, with "they did it on our dime" vs. "they did it on their own time" arguments abounding.
The only thing I don't see here is a "they only work 8 months a year but get paid for the whole year, screw them" argument.
No one, including the original article, asks whose money is being used to BUY the lesson plans.
In many districts, lesson plans are bought by the school districts and the teachers are strongly encouraged to use these as part of the curriculum. In others, yes teachers are asked to create lesson plans, but there is a stipulation here. Teachers are paid for a years work, ~30-50k, but only work approximately 40 hours a week for 180 days (depending on state/district). That's approximately 36 weeks of a 52 week years leaving 16 weeks or 4 months off. This time is supposed to be used to stay current on teaching methodologies, regulations, and to develop and refine lesson plans for the coming school year. Of course some people will point out that some teachers choose to teach summer school or at a community college during this time to supplement income, but that is their choice and usually not factored in to their salary.
I, of course, believe teachers are underpaid, but I do believe that the time taken to develop lesson plans are included in their salary. Also, let's be honest, after a few years of teaching a specific course, lesson plans don't normally change that drastically.
And this would be a perfect example of why teachers need to be paid more.
Unless the employment contract explicitly transfers ownership of creative works to the employer then the lesson plans legally do not belong to the school.
That's simply not true. The employment contract doesn't need to explicitly mention anything about ownership of creative works. If you are simply an "employee" as opposed to an independent contractor, your work falls under the work for hire doctrine, and your employer owns the copyright.
In the world of copyrights and contracts this stuff is cut and dry, the default in all cases - including software development - is for ownership to rest with the creator, full stop.
No, it's not cut and dry. See, for example, the Community for Creative Non-Violence. And the "default" would depend on whether you're an employee or a contractor. If you're a coder who's been hired as a salaried member for some company and that's your full time job, the "default" is probably that you're an employee and you're creating works for hire, so ownership rests with your employer, full stop.
That said, at least at the university level, the culture is that works by professors are not works for hire. I'm not sure if there really is a sound legal basis for that (probably depends on their employment contract), but any university who tried to assert ownership over professors' work would find itself being attacked on all sides.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I use google to search for lesson plan ideas all the time. There are plenty of them for free out there. Sure they may be of dubious quality but I wouldn't ever use them without changing them to my own needs anyway. I'm skeptical that this is anything more than a newspaper fluff piece.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
When I told my mother (a retired teacher) about this notion of selling lesson plans to other teachers online, she replied, "That's silly!"
That's because my mom knows that teachers are the original open-sourcers. We routinely create lesson plans, worksheets and other classroom materials, freely give this material to other teachers, encourage them to adapt it, and assume that they will freely provide the material to other teachers. Sound familiar?
We've done this for decades because, frankly, we have to. Time constraints and the need for quality free material forced it on us.
That's why these sites have been around for years, but have never really taken off. They never will. If I meet a teacher who sells their plans to this site (and I haven't yet) I will gently remind them of the strong tradition of open-source material in education.
That's part of the reason my wife stopped teaching in the public school system. She kept having to devote a disproportionate amount of time to paperwork and dicipline measures.
Her school had a Principal, but not a VP to save money. The VP is usually the one responsible for handling dicipline issues. Since they didn't have one, and the Principal didn't want to be bothered, the teachers were told they cannot send kids to the office more than a couple of times a semester. For those problem children (we all remember them from school don't we) she was forced to try and dicipline them in class, which took away from actually teaching.
There was also the pressure not to spend money on her lessons that had already been budgeted for her. The reason being that any unspent money at the end of the year went into the Principals slush fund, which he used for stupid shit like rewaxing the floors in the gym, despite the fact that at the end of the school year the gym floor was going to be ripped up and replaced.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
If not explicitly spelled out in a contract, then the IP rights are determined by the laws of the state. Most of the time, these tend to error on the side of the individual rather than the organization.
Where did you read that? Federal IP law preempts state law almost entirely. Occasionally in suits you'll see lawyers invoke state common law to add insult to injury. Also, no, if rights are not explicitly spelled out in the contract, it means nothing. If you are simply an "employee" (as opposed to a contractor), the default is that your work is "work for hire", and it belongs to your employer. This is long-settled doctrine. The question revolves around your type of employment, but your employment contract doesn't necessarily have to say anything about copyrights, and your boss can still own your work.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
The poster has an odd grasp of K12 education. Teachers never give away lesson plans. They hoard them, because their plans are their life's blood and their job security. Even teachers who mentor don't give out 'ready made' lesson plans.
So what these for-pay sites do is free up content that would otherwise be locked up. They give an incentive for teachers to cross that 'thin chalk line' and share.
And to answer 'who owns lessons developed for public school', the answer is the creator, not the school. Teachers are not hired as writers or curriculum developers, but as on-site instructors. The curricula are a by-product. If schools expect to own all the material their teachers develop, they need to negotiate that right-- and increase teacher pay.
A.
Maybe if parents actually took an active interest in their kid's education things could get better; but I've come to the conclusion most parent's simply don't care.
My Grandmother, Wife, and several close friends are teachers. That is the single gripe that is consistent across all teachers I know. My grandmother and wife had issues with the administration, and my best friend had issues with other teachers, but every teacher I know gripes about the attitude of parents. They want their kid to get A's, but not to be challenged, disciplined, or even disappointed.
It's nothing new, but it is getting worse as far as I can tell. I remember kids goofing off in class and then bragging about how their mother/father came in and read the teacher the riot act to get them out of trouble. I on the other hand, was far more afraid of my parents than anything the school could legally do to me. I fully intend to put the fear of God into my children if I ever find out they are getting in trouble at school.
The teachers authority comes from the Parents! If you don't support your teachers ability to chastize your child when necessary, they will not be able to teach your child effectively. That requires you to be the Bad Guy at home and force them to study, do homework, and respect their teachers.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
> The teacher owns the material, it is they who develops it and
AFAIK, the legal issue of who owns the rights to materials developed by paid employees is complex and varies between jurisdictions. Are you talking about a particular jurisdiction for which you are familiar with the law and the terms of employment of public school teachers?
Or are you just shooting off your opinion as to "moral rights" in this situation in general?
And when they own a significant portion of all good lesson plans do they jack up the price and start suing teachers using lesson plans that are similar to theirs?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
and without a doubt they all hate it. A couple have master's degrees and for that they get an extra $1000/per year. They work practically all day into the evening grading papers, coming up with lesson plans, meeting with parents, etc. One friend who stopped teaching just couldn't afford to do it anymore, because she was paying for her own teaching and students' school supplies out of her paycheck, which she said was around $1000 per year. I know two other teachers who have quit as well, one saying how she ended up just being a babysitter to problem children.
Good for them for selling their lesson plans! I know if and when I have children, the teachers will be well funded, I'll have none of this BS about teachers paying for the kids with loser parents. That's what those parents are, because if you can't afford $5/month for pencils and paper then WTF are you doing?
help fill in hidden movie endings @ End of the Credits
If they want to sell their tests and answer keys as well, I'm sure they'll find a market for that as well.
I was public school teacher for several years in Maruland, and there where no canned lessons plans made available.
I was teaching students math ( Algebra to Calculus) and Pascal. On the math side I thought it idiotic that I ( or other teachers ) had to reinvent the wheel just about every day in terms of lesson plans or ideas in how to present certain topics. I would have loved to have access plans and ideas to take as a base and adjust them to the people in my classes.
The only time there was real access to presentation ideas of certain topics was on one professional development day. That one day of presenting successful strategies for teaching certain mathematical topics was the only time such a resource was ever available in the 3 years I taught ( other professional development days had little or nothing in terms of this kind of topic).
These days I see my kids make use of resources on the Internet for supplemental material that would have been very useful to me back then. It seems to me that schools and teacher unions missed an opportunity in utilizing the Internet to make starting teachers more effective sooner.
So, I suppose that these teachers selling their knowledge is the first step in doing that in a capitalist way.
A researcher who in his "spare time" develops an idea for a machine he just so happens to be working on at work isn't allowed to sell his work, why should public teachers have that right?
Work related work is...... work. And when you're on the public payroll that work belongs to the public, not to you.
If the teachers are on salary, as most are, anything they develop for use in their own classroom is arguably their employer's.
Now, if they develop lesson plans and do NOT use them in their own classroom, that's probably a different story. But that might violate moonlighting rules.
In any case, this is something that will likely be covered in future collective bargaining agreements.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Unbelievable. Why would somebody making a sweet $34,000 after a mandated four-year education feel the need to supplement their income!
We're paying them a fair wage for their work. Salary, so the "extra time" they spend outside of school (like they need that!) lesson planning, well, that's figured in as well.
Those greedy bastards. Trying to afford things like food, housing and clothes.
BTW: Google ad as I type this is Want to Teach Special Ed? Noooooooooooo. Nooo! No. No sir! No, I do not. No. Thank you.
Still not dead.
It's laughable at the number of people here who think that teachers get time to create anything during public school hours. My wife is a third grade teacher. She spends literally all of her at work free time in meetings. Parent meetings. Administration meetings. Team meetings. She gets zero time to grade papers, produce teaching plans, or anything else at school during her regular working day. She makes a whopping $45k a year which for the Atlanta area will barely rent a one bedroom apartment and keep up a run down car. If it were not for my job we would have to move just to make ends meet. Not to mention that she has $60k of education debt @$350 a month. Plus she still has to do continuing education and pay for it out of her pocket. It takes roughly 15 to 20 hours of her time at home per week to grade papers and do lesson plans. It's just this school perhaps? Not on your life. She has worked at 4 different schools and every one of them is exactly the same. Ask any teacher, I bet you get nearly the same results. I agree the public school system is crap. But it's not the teachers fault. They have to teach what the national, state and local school board(s) tell them to teach. Not to mention that they have to try and get Johnny who doesn't speak English and is dumber than a box of hammers up to the same level as the rest of the class. For which the rest of the class suffers, because the teacher has to spend one on one time with him. Before you go bagging on how it's always the teachers fault, perhaps you should put your brain back in and actually think of who controls what the teacher does. Because they sure don't get to teach what they want to. If they did, kids might actually get a quality education.
That should be "their child is the next" rap/hip hop/C&W star, movie actor, football or basketball hero, winning NASCAR driver...all the rest of them will be soldiers or homerland security professionals or government commissar.
What seems to be missing in this discussion is that virtually all school teachers (as opposed to university professors) are working under some sort of collective bargaining agreement (e.g. union contract), which almost certainly establishes required work hours, treatment of intellectual property, etc.
I'd have no problem with this if the teacher's union wasn't what it was.
Which is more like $120K if you annualized for weeks off. I am not crying for them.
(Disclaimer: I have a Bachelor's in History with a focus in Secondary Education 6-12.)
Lesson plans are vastly to customized to lay a blanket statement that they are being "sold." What is most likely being bought is ideas for activities for certain topics.
For my first semester of student teaching I had to teach 9th grade Regents Review and Inclusion. The number of nights where I spent staying up until 1-2am trying to customize the lesson plan for each individual student was absolutely INSANE. No cut/copy/paste lesson plan that I could buy online would adhere to the number of different IEP's I needed to follow.
Some topics are just to difficult to come up with a solid activity that is engaging and thought provoking. The ancient river valleys, as an example, became repetitive, boring and students began to lose interest. Try teaching the "8 Features of a Civilization" to ADD, ADHD, students with broken homes during first period on a Monday.
So if I spent 10-15 bucks on a lesson that might be a good engaging activity then so be it. I won't be handing the receipt for my purchase into my coordinator asking for reimbursement.
Teachers don't get to work with databases or hardware. 125 students on a given day, vary personalities and requirements will break down a person. Having to walk the line between B.S. state standards and what you know is good quality education in your own gut will drive a person wild.
I know it did it to me...
South Korean kids clean their schools too, and their parents are just as convinced as American parents that they are all geniuses, destined to be the next UN Head.
As far as I'm aware, public school teachers keep their lesson plans when they retire/transfer. If a school teacher retires or changes jobs, her lesson plans stay with her. It's not like schools have backlogs and files of retired/fired/transferred teachers lesson plans. I don't see why they can't sell them. Schools have never owned/took possession of these lesson plans anyway- why should they start now? If that was the case, why would every teacher have to make them? Wouldn't it just be the case that the school kept the lesson plans of their best performing teachers and redistributed them to any newbs they hire? People that equate lesson plans with a day's coding are delusional. I am a programmer myself. Quit being so self-centered and anti-social; not every job is like IT.
Sorry, but you're wrong. the teachers are hired to teach, they are not hired necessarily to make lesson plans. They are not hired to make lesson plans and unless it is spelled out in their contracts that they are expected to write their own lesson plans it is not part of their job. Under your scenario, if a teacher bought and used a lesson plan, and only changed a few things here and there the copyright would go to the district. Which of course, is a violation of the section of the copyright law about derivative works belonging to the original author (in this case the copyright owner of the original lesson plan the teacher in question modified).
Of course you're partly right, as copyright law is anything but cut and dry. You're also, partly wrong on the software bit. It's fairly established by court precedent, that coders, who create software in the off hours that are "unrelated" to the work they do for the company belongs by default to the author and not the company. Which is why it is so critical to read contracts before accepting a job. Contracts can change the status quo and defaults. And of course so can courts, which is why it is never a good idea to develop anything on your own in the field in which you work without first getting a release from your employer.
The reason why, at the college level, teacher's work are by default not considered works-for-hire, is because, they too are hired as teachers and not drafters of lesson plans. There are cases and contracts that alter this default. Again, it's best to get this spelled out in your contract so it is cut-and-dry. Which is also, never foolproof, as courts can and have thrown out contracts whole cloth and re-written them as they see fit. So, again nothing is really ever cut and dry if it deals with copyright or contracts even. At least in the USA.
Way to troll, I had several PHDs teaching me through my education. Three in High School and one in middle school.
I'd bet your experience is the exception to the rule. I had football coaches teaching classes in "health" and geography. I knew more about geography and foreign cultures than my teacher did. I worked with a retired teacher whose background was in music, and was assigned to teach computing classes. He admitted to me that he knew nothing about computers, and basically just took roll and let the kids do whatever they wanted with the PC's. Most schools are not filled with overqualified teachers bursting with knowledge and experience. Most schools are filled with education majors that were among the lowest achievers in college, protected by a teacher's union that views public education as one massive full employment program for their members.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Perhaps the new fad for principals will be to build and control the best possible portfolio of lesson plan IP.
Nullius in verba
the administrators down at the administration building, the bus drivers, the bus mechanics etc, the compliance officers, the fund raisers, HR people etc.
My local school district, Fairfax County Public Schools has some interesting stats;
see http://www.fcps.edu/fs/budget/documents/approved/2010/ApprovedBudget10.pdf
there are 13,744 teachers
there are 8,393 NON TEACHING POSITIONS.
likewise
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/BarbaraHollingsworth/Fairfax_School_Boards_Gateway_drug_101909.html
The school board recently wanted to spend 130 million (with 73 million on a spa facility and cafeteria for administrators) on a new administration building when students are studying in trailers. It would have also consolidated a number of school based positions forcing those positions to have to travel to/from the schools.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
worksheets for pay = less worksheets = either less meaningless work or work with more meaning or both. In any case, stopping the proliferation of worksheets (even if just a little) is a good thing imho.
The issue isn't that parents don't want their children "degraded", for heaven's sake - I think I speak for most parents when I say that yes, we make our kids help out with cleaning at home. The problem is that we don't send kids to school to learn how to mop the floor - we want them to learn math, reading, etc. And there's precious little time for that already. As for the rest of your moaning about kids today - you forgot to include "get off my lawn".
As for the actual topic at hand, (although IANAL) I suspect that the school district would have at least a reasonable basis to put a claim on money being made with teaching materials. But I think it would be a shame to actually recoup this money while 1) teacher usually incur significant out-of-pocket expenses in buying their own classroom materials and 2) are paid relatively little. The real answer is to fund our schools adequately through appropriations.
Ok, we have this:
and this:
But then:
Well, which is it? Parents don't care, or they care too much? Ever stop to consider the possibility that maybe it's not all the parents in the world who are screwed up, but you?
If we want to move to an education system whereby teachers are valued based on their ability to teach, and the performance of their students, then the teachers own their lesson plans. This is assuming, of course, that they developed the plan in the first place. Let's just say that's the case in order to make the discussion clearer.
Teachers, good ones, develop their methods for teaching students. If those methods lead to better student understanding, then let them sell them to other teachers. It's really no different than all of the stupid process patents that we rail over, except they're not actually trying to lock them away, they're trying to share them with their peer group and get themselves some benefit in the process.
I don't see a big deal here. They figured out how to build a better mousetrap, let them market it. Unless a school district contains similar "work product" provisions in their teacher contracts that many tech people have in theirs, the schools have no right to the processes and products developed by the teachers for their use.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
The idea that higher taxes are needed is purely ignorant of the problem.
At least you didn't use the "throwing money at the problem wont fix anything" canard.
How can rural schools consistently spend less than many big cities per pupil yet turn out better educated students?
Lower. Cost. Of. Living.
2. Overly generous pay to teachers with seniority without regard to ability
3. Over priced administrators.
Yes, heaven forbid you should expect a descent salary after getting a masters degree while continuing your education and getting a few decades of experience on the job while working 50+ hours a week.
4. Ridiculous retirement packages.
Yes, heaven forbid that someone still gets a defined benefit pension plan instead of having to risk their livelihood in the Wall Street casino.
The reason its hard to push increases of taxes through is because they've been brainwashed by decades of uncountered conservative propaganda.
Fixed that for you.
Taxes are the last thing we need more of for this problem
You get what you pay for. That applies to public schools as much as it does to food inspection, Wall Street oversight, disaster preparedness, health care and infrastructure.
Low taxes have high costs.
Care to point out which areas of law you think I'm wrong about (and specify your sources)? I didn't weigh in on the specific issue of whether the teachers' lesson plans would be considered works for hire, because I don't know the relevant precedents, and because it might vary by situation (as you note, factors such as whether you used your employer's resources, and whether you did it in "off hours" come into play).
My main point was that the OP's statement is completely misleading. Under no circumstances should anyone who considers themselves a normal employee (as opposed to a contractor) ever assume that works created in the course of their employment belong to them. You must, must, must get clarification on that point, either in your employment contract or from your own legal counsel. It's foolish and dangerous to assume that just because your contract doesn't say anything about ownership of copyright, that you automatically get it.
Some teachers are given "planning hours" during the school day, so it could be easily argued in court that creating a lesson plan used school resources (time) and was part of the normal course of employment, and thus they are works for hire. They may not be hired specifically to make lesson plans, but making lesson plans is (well, ideally, should be) part of teaching. If you are hired as a secretary, you may not specifically have been hired to write copy for a brochure, but if you were told to do so, the product would still be a work for hire.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Obviously lesson plans produced at government funded public schools should be kept free and open so that they can be effectively refined and tailored for specific environments.
I think it depends on the district, the teacher, and the material.
The district my children are in (Seattle) has been notoriously chaotic about dispensing curriculum and lesson plans. In the name of fostering academic freedom, choices about textbooks and curriculum are devolved to the individual schools and frequently the individual teachers (schools not being given a budget for a curriculum developer). Only in the last few years has there been any central curriculum development whatsoever.
In this case, the teachers design these plans outside of regular work hours on their own nickel. I'd say the curriculum no more belongs to the school than the web apps you make on your off-hours belong to your employer.
Another district across the lake (Bellevue) takes exactly the opposite tact. Their curriculum is highly standardized and highly centralized. Teachers are given detailed lesson plans and materials and are expected to execute those faithfully.
In that case, you have a curriculum which is developed by a taxpayer-funded district, by a professional curriculum coordinator, and very clearly falls into the public domain.
In between, I suppose there are a lot of gray areas, but I don't have enough exposure to teaching to comment on that.
The problem is, as a teacher, I frequently share my ideas with other teachers without expecting payment... or at least, not in money - my desire is to generate more ideas and sharing freely encourages others to do the same - the more ideas, the more good ideas (albeit more bad ones too). In terms of rights, the teachers are usually the rights-holders, but we are at the same time frequently required to hand in our planbook at the end of the year / tenure of employment.
There is frequently not a huge supply of graduates. Schools in my area offer bounties ranging from 5 to 10 thousand above the standard salary to "high needs" fields such as science, math, and foreign language. The main problem is not this, however, but increasingly low numbers of people willing to interact with students in a changing culture (which focuses less on discipline and responsibility and more on personal whims) and, to be honest, one that does not foster a high value for our education system. Funds are almost always tight and though the ideal setting for most classes is between 12 and 18 students, none of mine are even under 25 (most are in the 30s). For those who think that firing administrators is the way to go--they are not paid all that much more than classroom teachers, there are never that many on a campus, and they work far more hours than the pay increase is worth.
Is this not directly analogous to software written (or tested) on the taxpayer dime? If there's a market for lesson plans, there's a market. A teacher should be free to make a profit off his or her ingenuity and/or hard work while at the same time increasing the efficiency of quality lesson distribution. A teacher shouldn't be free, however, to block redistribution of a lesson plan once sold. In other words, no restrictive copyrights, patents, timebombs, or whatever. For some reason, the emotions surrounding teacher pay, workload, respect, etc. seem to be clouding this particular issue.
how many people feel fit to pontificate on this subject with absolutely no qualifications to do so.
I'm sorry, but teaching at a University is not remotely adequate. I got my MS in Mathematics, and have several PhD friends who have come to visit my classes. They UNIVERSALLY leave looking disheveled, muttering about how they don't understand how anyone can DO that all day long.
Many primary & secondary school teachers treat their curricula with a sort of defacto open-source model. They willingly share individual tricks, lesson plans, etc., with other teachers who ask. If they have been around the block, and their curricula is really robust, solid, complete, pick another adjective, then sometimes they package it up with a pretty bow and sell it at NCTM conferences. Someone else COULD do what they did, but it might be worth a few buck not to HAVE to.
As a teacher, it is appalling to me that folks seem to think teachers don't deserve to make a little side money. It has already been covered in previous posts that the "cushy" vacation scheme is not really the full picture. If you count the extra hours teachers work, we don't get much more time off than anyone else. We just take it all at once. And it has been my experience that most people who "claim" they work a 60 to 80 hour week do nothing of the sort. I am completely tied to my classroom for 12 hours every day. Sometimes I can't even go pee for 3 hours, because I can't afford the break, or because I have back-to-back classes (I work at a charter school, so we don't have a union). Forget about "coffee breaks" & whatever else all you normal people are allowed to take. If I didn't have the day off, you can bet your boots I wouldn't have time to be posting here.
Any public school that has the time to complain about teachers doing a sideline for material they created should be shut down for wasting their resources. If the school had it's act together enough to profit from creating curriculum, they should have been able to support the teacher in such a way that the teacher didn't need to create all their curriculum at home in the first place. Most schools don't have their act together, so kudos to their teachers for taking the initiative. It only yields good publicity for the school anyway - my school would love to claim that our math teachers' curriculum is being adopted by other schools, even if they weren't making any money from it.
Here's reality. Yes, there are companies that sell canned units with lesson plans. These are generally forced down teacher's throats in spite of the fact that they should have known better.
Good teachers match the lesson plans to the students which are different from year to year, class to class, day to day, depending one which way the wind is blowing or whether the moon is full. Canned lessons cannot possibly cover that.
Of the teachers who actually write lesson plans (and very few do after a couple of years), most write their lesson plans at home. This is where food, drink, restrooms, and UNDISTURBED time happens. Even then, they have to keep in mind that these lesson plans will not survive an encounter with students or states changing the standards, yet one more time. Lesson plans also occur because someone (a bean counter) requires them, but the teacher doesn't actually use them. Most lesson plans are an outline so that the teacher doesn't forget something. It's like lecture notes, but without the lecture part.
Teachers (for-real teachers) don't get 9 months on and 3 months off. They usually work year around, at nights, weekends, and are on call any other time. Average pay is one thing, but starting pay is another. Most are required to take an additional year or more of coursework at their own expense while being payed Sure, teachers write lesson plans and sell them. They also write educational software. Many teachers take on second jobs like flipping burgers, retail sells, and college level teaching. I knew a teacher once who stripped for additional income. Are the schools going to lay claim to that? One could ask, why do teachers put up with it? They don't have to.
Yes, there are bad teachers out there, more than you would think. Most did not start out that way. Most were made by the same system that keeps them employed, and it isn't unions. Obama talks about connecting teacher pay with student success. Great idea! Now, teachers will be less willing to deal with difficult students. You know, the students that need good teachers the most. All the time, politicians talk about parents, students, teachers, and administrators are part of the problem and the solution, but efforts are always directed at the teachers and schools. They often talk about graduation rates, like getting more warm bodies through the system is the problem. They are only peripherally concerned that any content was actually learned.
By the way, I teach in a rural school with high minority rates (97%) and overcrowding. Having parents involved is great, but right now I could use a little less outside help thank you. I don't go to your job and tell you how to do it. I don't require you to re-certify on a regular basis to keep your job (at your expense). I don't tell you what you can say, do, wear, or hang out with to keep your job. I don't redefine what your job every few years. (Like somehow, children have changed that much over the last 5 centuries.) I don't expect you to work many free hours outside of your job environment. I don't expect you to take your work home at all. Don't expect me to satisfy any of your expectations that I don't expect of you.
How's this for a solution: upon graduation from high school you pick 3 teachers that have been the most influential in your life.
You are confusing effectiveness with popularity. Teachers are there to educate you not to make you feel good about yourself. All this will do is reward the teachers that are either popular or whom taught subjects that you used during your university education. It will NOT reward the teachers who are actually good at their job, althogh there may be some degree of overlap.
Most states require a Master's or 5th year to either start or within 3-5 years of starting teaching. So comparing to a Bac. average salary isn't really an accurate reflection of earning averages.
While the work day and school year may be shorter than average, contracts are written so that all necessary work must be done. So, for example, not correcting and entering grades in a timely manner could be grounds for termination. Not having thorough lessonplans x days - weeks- months in advance, ditto. So evening and weekend working is par for the course. And, of course, drops the per hr. rate of pay....
Copyright: technically, the school owns the work since it was developed for the job. I've never heard of a school enforcing that and usually they see teachers publishing as a positive for their school or district.
I work for a university. Any work-related ideas I come up with belong to the university.
I presume, then, it's an uncommon arrangement for faculty to get any kind of royalties or other compensation for authoring textbooks or other works?
If you write software for a living, you can't go home and sell your days coding, it belongs to your employer.
Au contraire. In fact, on a number of occasions, I've negotiated precisely that arrangement and refused to sign employment agreements that didn't respect some semblance of it.
Tweet, tweet.
If a teacher creates the lesson plan during the working day, using school resources, the plan belongs to the school. Fair enough.
If the teacher creates the lesson plan wholly in his own time using his own resources, it belongs to him. Fair enough.
Well OK nothing in life is quite so simple, he is likely to have to prove that he intended on creating the work for his own purposes, and not the school - it can't be incidental to his employment. There may also be a question over the timing of creation - I suspect any work created during "office hours" in the school holidays still counts as being created in school time. Note that teachers may be required to attend the school during class times (8.30 - 3.30 or whatever) but they will still be "at work" for 8 hours a day or whatever, they are merely allowed to work from home and can do those other hours as they see fit. Therefore a teacher may find it difficult to prove that they did not create the plan "in school time".
There may also be questions over using purchased lesson plans - a teacher is under a contract of service. The school is specifically paying for the work that person, whom cannot subcontract their duties. It would be entirely within the rights of the employer to require that the teacher creates their own lesson plan, though as swapping lesson plans is general practice the school would likely to have to specify this in the contract of employment or general policy.
As the daughter of a long time, now retired public school teacher and who has friends who are currently public school teachers, I'll chime in with supporting teachers to sell their plans and keep the money.
I'll also corroborate all the people saying that teachers make these lesson plans outside of class, at home. They also do all their grading at home, including over holidays and school breaks. They start school 1 week or more before all the students. Most teachers I know pay for a significant portion of non-textbook classroom supplies OUT OF THEIR OWN POCKETS.
Teachers may have summers off - at least, ones who don't teach in year-round districts - but what they often do with that time is get a part time job so they can make up for the crappy pay they get.
Frankly, I find it appalling that we do not consider teaching a true profession, yet we make teachers go through a long certification process before we let them in the public schools to do often thankless work for crap pay and shoddy treatment. I am one of those people who adores teaching and is good at it, but I've seen what the public school system does to people, and the pay won't even come close to covering my living expenses. No thank you.
So let them sell the lesson plans. If it gives teachers more time with their families and a little more spending money, they deserve it, and so do their families.
Love, Squeedle
I do not see a problem with teachers selling their lesson plans per se. However, I think students would be best served if our teachers were pooling resources by publishing their lesson plans for free online. But of course I am thinking only of the best interest of the student.
Been there. Done that. Retired. There are a lot of unfounded assumptions in these posts. Basics if you choose teaching it will take some time and at first you won't get paid very well, but if you hang in there and get more credits, going to summer school for about ten years, you'll wind up doing okay by your mid thirties. In Seattle, a school teacher with 15 years experience (average age 37-40), with a BA, MA and +135 hours (all those summer quarters for 10 years) makes $75K (2009-2010 salary schedule) and gets summers off--because you've peaked on credits and don't need to do that any more, plus Christmas, Spring break, etc. and all the bennies you could want. Compared to private employment where you're lucky to get three weeks vacation a year that's close to $100K equivalent. But that's the big city, too.
Smaller districts often pay a bit less, but smaller districts are ALSO in more rural areas where the cost of living is less. In many places in WA, teachers are among the highest paid folks in town. All totaled it's a pretty decent middle class lifestyle.
Not saying it's all roses. Teaching can be a very hard job with lots of expectations from parents, lots of paperwork, and lots of extra time at night preparing for the next day. And frankly, there are lots of places I wouldn't want to be a teacher at all. You know what I mean. Also, it takes awhile to move up on the salary schedule to where you actually make ok money. The first few years can be pretty dismal.
Retirement is pretty good. In WA a teacher with 40 years experience (25-65) would get 80% of pay plus FICA. By the time YOU retire, there might be nothing! But that's the idea. You actually would make more money retired than working: $60K retirement plus $22K FICA.
It's one of those fields where, depending on where you are at and what you teach, it could be a GREAT job, or a piss poor one.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
My mom used to teach and I remember one of her big complaints about K-12 in the US was that most parents got the idea that school was just a free babysitter
I also thought this article stated 'Public School Teachers Selling Piano Lessons Online'
Boy, it has been a long day.
Ha. Reminds me of why I left teaching.
If, as most Good teachers do, this content and plans were developed at home in their own time then go for it. I have 3+ gig of lesson content, plans assessments etc that I did Not pass over to my last school (or any school for that matter) as these were developed in my own time and I owned the IPR (except some images from google). I have sold some of this and have shared some of it (bartered between colleagues). When a teachers spend weekly 26+ hours in front of children, then another 3+ hours on Yard duty, then the usual admin and then the ongoing hours of bureaucratic garb that plagues the school and its staff these days, then one can assume that most all of this content Does belong to the teacher (most definitely a good one) and I am all for that.
You can always tell a poor teacher by the product he pedals - unprepared with discontinuous lesson content (probably downloaded without change or coordination from some website).
As far as I feel now, they can have the content I developed as this stuff is invariably so context and cohort dependent that it is by and large useless to any other Good teacher without considerable amendment and coordination with the 'good' teachers existing schemes of work. Bad teachers either dont know, dont care and tend to complain the loudest (project really!) about how bad and unfocussed the kids are, rather than asking the question "What can I do to ....".
Anonymous Coward as I cant be arsed creating yet Another account.
they can get out and fond some other job that pays 50K for 9 months work.
"hey got a 2.6% increase last year "
That's from Cola, as determined by their contract.
"We should be applauding these teachers for finding good ways to pass around good teaching material, n"
Yes, but How do you know it's good?
""the taxpayers pay you to teach so we own all of your creative works and you can't ever make money off of them". "
It's true, the taxpayers paid for it, it shouldn't be sold. I can't imagnie the outrages I woudl face if I decided to sell the code I wrote via tax dollars to anyone who wanted it.
"I just happen to think that we should be doing everything we can to make sure our teachers succeed. "
Yes, but this isn't it. It once again favors people with money, does NOTHING to help the kids, and stifles the creation of new good teachers.
Teacher are there because society has deemed that an educated populace make a country successful; whic is correct.
Educating children is the point, not paying teachers. Paying teacher is neccesary to do the job,. and they shoudl be compensated approprietly.
The data they need to pass on needs to be centrelized:
http://harns.blogspot.com/2008/07/so-obvious-and-yet-so-not-done.html
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Would something like this seriously save time? I mean, your searching all of these teacher based sites for lesson plans, quizzes, tests, ext. to actually find one that fits the current needs of your classroom. I’m sure more often than not, you buy one of these items only to find out it does not fit your lesson plan or it’s of poor quality, so you have to change it anyhow or continue your search over and over again.
The time you spend searching and/or trying to sell your own lesson plans, quizzes, tests, ext. could be used to write something of quality that is directly related to what “type” of students you have and unit topic you are educating. Not only that, it will re-enforce your knowledge and teach-ability of the subject at hand! I for one, found helping & tutoring others, along with writing reports & tutorials a remarkable way to become a subject matter expert.
My biggest fear with something like this is that it encourages lazy individuals to download a lesson plan and simply wing it without being subject matter experts – some better than others. I had a couple in grade school, undergrad, and grad. I honestly walked away not learning much in those cases, except for off topic things I was interested in.
I believe in paying what people are worth, and I’m not trying to down play the work involved because I know it can be a time consuming burden, especially for new teachers, or teachers teaching a new subject. But before you take shortcuts, you have to ask yourself “what type of teacher do you want to be?”
Random side thoughts:
I would be surprised if these teachers make much money on these sites. If there was a strong market for it, a corporation would have been spun off to fit the niche – then again, isn’t’ that what the teacher’s edition textbooks are for?
Maybe a wiki could be used to take and merge and/or collect the best lesson plans and activities? So instead of teachers paying other teachers, it would be teachers helping other teachers.
I keep reminding my teach friends that bubble sheets are your friend! If it takes forever to run them through the machine, do what my Earth Science teacher did, hole punch one as the answer key, and overlap it onto a student’s bubble sheet.
Math teachers should not collect and grade individual homework. My pre-calc teacher had a problem on the overhead every morning that we worked on while he walked around making sure our homework solutions looked reasonable and giving us points for it. When he was done, we would go over the homework answers and a few selected homework solutions before he taught new material. This forced us to review our homework and make corrections while it was fresh in our mind - which was very effective.
If you happen to know a teacher who believes in social justice and open source lessons plans tell them to contact me at an experimental site I'm about to launch, using FOSS fyi.
http://www.teachchange.org/
Below are 23 mostly free lesson publishing sites for k-12 and University levels. You can contribute to the bookmarks using tags like lessonpublishing if you would like to help.
http://groups.diigo.com/group/teachchange/content/tag/lessonpublishing
I'd like to know how many slashdot teacher haters have ever volunteered in a diverse public school or taught 36 kids in a trailer? I have. I've taught grades 6-12 in public schools for six years. It was my second career after working 6 years between Compaq and Macromedia.
By the time the haters finish cheerleading each other on this topic there will be 1000 myths. Barf.