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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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
Disclaimer: I lecture and tutor at university.
I think your approach misses the key point of teaching: the teacher. A good lesson plan is like a good document template or assignment specification: it assists the user to do their job. However, I would strongly doubt that a lesson plan alone is sufficient to make a bad teacher a good one.
To that end I see little point in requiring unique lesson plans, unique lecture slides or unique text books. All of these are simply tools used by the teacher to assist in aiding the students' education. While it may be lazy to simply copy another lesson plan (or other teaching aid) without adapting it to your own unique class, if there is no individualisation to the situation then it will not be as effective. So I would encourage teachers to find lesson plans from other sources as well as adapting their own, the bad teachers might just learn something new, and the good teachers will take the best of the different approaches to compliment their style. Taking this away would only hamper teachers in doing their job.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.