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."

Comments

*First post..

[stillpixel]

The teacher owns the material, it is they who develops it and in no way has to do with the schools.

Re:*First post..

[rtb61]

Robing Peter to pay Paul is pointless and stupid. 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. A shared resource granting a community benefit in creating and maintaining the best possible lesson plans.

The only thing greed ever feeds is more greed.

Re:*First post..

[x_IamSpartacus_x]

This is just a retarded question. Teachers make piss for money and now someone is complaining that they are actually doing something to compliment that? Teachers on average make less than $50,000/year doing one of the most publicly scrutinized, emotionally demanding jobs in the USA. They got a 2.6% increase last year but their buying power went DOWN according to the AFT Public Employees
.
We should be applauding these teachers for finding good ways to pass around good teaching material, not bitching that "the taxpayers pay you to teach so we own all of your creative works and you can't ever make money off of them".

For the record, NO I am not a teacher. I just happen to think that we should be doing everything we can to make sure our teachers succeed. Obama talks a big game and I hope he comes through for them but at this point it's been talk.

Piss off theodp and rtb61.

Re:*First post..

[Chuck Chunder]

Robing Peter to pay Paul is pointless and stupid.

I don't see what clothing has to do with it.

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.

Obviously? In practice unless there is an incentive for sharing there is a good chance they won't be "kept free and open", rather they will remain completely undistributed and locked up.

Re:*First post..

[Lehk228]

lesson plans are generally not produced at school, typically they are created off the clock at home.

Re:*First post..

[tmmagee]

Teachers are being paid to teach. They are not being paid to create lesson plans. I am not a full time teacher, but I have taught, and I can tell you that when I do I regularly use lesson plans that I have created at previous schools or in my free time when I not working for anyone (but know I will be teaching again someday down the line). And, yes, sometimes I have even downloaded plans off of the web. 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.

Re:*First post..

[dstates]

Faculty at public universities still own their royalties. School teachers and university faculty are not so different. Both are professionals and both get tenure in most states. If a school district gave a teacher release time and specific instructions to develop a lesson plan, that would be work for hire. Much more frequently, the school district just assumes that the teacher will make preparations on their own time. In that case, it is not work for hire. If you want to pay teachers overtime for all the work they put in at home preparing for class, I am sure a lot of teachers would be happy to see the additional pay. But if the teacher does work on their own time, they should own their intellectual property.

Re:*First post..

[Quothz]

Teachers on average make less than $50,000/year doing one of the most publicly scrutinized, emotionally demanding jobs in the USA.

Wrong link. You meant to point to this page, I think. (Your page addresses the salaries of probation officers, agricultural inspectors, and lots of other jobs, but not teachers.) The AFT's numbers show that schoolteachers, on average, make -slightly more- than $50,000/year. While I agree they're badly underpaid, one should also bear in mind that they don't work year-round and get much more vacation than most workers. They do work long hours, but so does everyone else.

Again, I agree their pay is abysmal when compared to their responsibilities and the qualifications we need from them. I can't help but feel our schools'd be in far better shape if we fired, say, 80% or so of the administration and gave their salaries to the teachers.

Re:*First post..

[TubeSteak]

Here's the real issue:

"Teachers swapping ideas with one another, that's a great thing," [Joseph McDonald, a professor at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University] said. "But somebody asking 75 cents for a word puzzle reduces the power of the learning community and is ultimately destructive to the profession."

His statement roughly boils down to a desire for teachers to be the gatekeepers of knowledge.
In my humble opinion, his point of view is ultimately destructive to the profession.
And by "profession" I mean "teaching", not "teacher's union" which is what he seems to be worried about.

Re:*First post..

[im_thatoneguy]

It's not work for hire.

If you're a music teacher hired by a school to teach students to play the instruments but you write a melody on the side on your own time the school doesn't own copyright to the song. It's a resource which you can bring to school (sheet music) and use as an educational tool.

Lesson plans aren't the work being hired. You aren't hired to create a lesson plan, you're hired to teach children.

Similarly if you hire me to create a house and I also manufacture a hammer off the clock you don't own my hammer. If I'm an author and I'm hired to lecture on my research the school doesn't magically inherit rights to my research because I gave a lecture. We once did work for hire and the company asked for all of our computers at the end. We just laughed all the way out the door. If you bring a monitor to work and use it instead of the small crappy corporate monitor--the company doesn't own your monitor just like it doesn't own your tie or your shirt or your shoes. You bring them to work to facilitate working. They aren't work property.

Schools pay teachers to show up and educate students.

Re:*First post..

[Compholio]

lesson plans are generally not produced at school, typically they are created off the clock at home.

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*. Look into it and you'll learn that "entrepreneurs" have been making a lot of money off of educating your children.

* On a slightly unrelated note, some districts even have policies that tell teachers they may not deviate from the lesson plans. I even know teachers that have been fired over this issue.

Re:*First post..

[BrokenHalo]

The person you are replying to here is also apparently unaware that teachers often (i.e. usually) do not have sufficient time allocated during school hours to produce lesson plans. Their time is taken up with marking and other activities.

So if they produce lesson plans and resources on their own time, there's no question of anybody being robbed. It's the teacher's own work, and s/he has the right to use or profit from it has s/he sees fit.

Re:*First post..

[im_thatoneguy]

Well at my high school there was:

A principle, vice principle/academic councilor, librarian, janitor, I think two accountants and a secretary. Not sure where I would have cut 80% of that.

And I know my mom would LOVE for there be more money spent on administration at her schools since she spends so much time filling out paperwork wasting tons of tax payers' dollars to ensure precious tax payers' dollars aren't being wasted.

Re:*First post..

[surferx0]

Teachers make piss for money and now someone is complaining that they are actually doing something to compliment that? Teachers on average make less than $50,000/year doing one of the most publicly scrutinized, emotionally demanding jobs in the USA.

In which they only work 180 days a year, get rock solid job security after a few years, have great family health coverage, and are provided a pension plan that absolves them from having to pay the social security "tax" every paycheck like the rest of us who probably won't even get anything out of it.

It's not as bad of a deal as you would think (why do you think so many people do it?) and it's not bad pay actually if you break it down on a per day basis, and your pay is guaranteed to increase over time as well as increase even more if you further your education. You can continue working over summer if you want more money or you can go on a 3 month trip to some foreign country you've always wanted to visit like my mom does every summer because teachers get such a massive amount of time off they can do stuff like that.

Re:*First post..

[iamweasel]

I'm not convinced they're paid only for teaching. I'm not payed only for writing code either, though that is the expected end result of my work. My mom used to teach and at least in this corner of the world the teachers are required to do planning work necessary to teach and are considered to be compensated for that time in their salary. Hence the extra material they create / plans should should be considered public property or at least be shared among colleagues. It's tougher for teachers just starting out with new material and gets easier once you've done planning and extra material, so you can reuse it the next course / year. At least here I would very much frown upon someone trying to profit from something they've done while being paid for it and not sharing it.

Re:*First post..

[Jurily]

Let me rephrase the argument for you:

OMG teachers are getting paid!!! How could this happen?! SOMEONE CALL THE POLICE!

Re:*First post..

[shoemilk]

Do like Japan and teach the kids cleaning responsibilities and that their actions have consequences: They clean the schools.

Re:*First post..

[edumacator]

In which they only work 180 days a year

It's actually a lot more than that. The students go 180 days. Most teachers are on 190 day schedule, but - and this is important - almost all teachers spend a good part of their two months off working to plan their lessons for the next year. We still get a lot of time off, but it isn't nearly as much as people think. Generally I get to school at 6:00 and leave around 5:00pm carrying a huge briefcase full of essays to grade. I spend about an hour or two grading every night. Not every night, but most. I go to about 20 or more school functions to support my students every year and go to two or three conferences over the summer. Most of my colleagues work about as much.

, get rock solid job security after a few years, have great family health coverage,and are provided a pension plan that absolves them from having to pay the social security "tax" every paycheck like the rest of us who probably won't even get anything out of it.

Every school day, nearly a thousand teachers leave the field of teaching. - http://www.all4ed.org/files/archive/publications/TeacherAttrition.pdf (PDF)

Your points are true but only for those who stay in teaching. The attrition rate for teachers is extremely high. So, the points you make are only valid for a small group of the teachers that actually make it to be vested. For most teachers getting to "avoid" the SS tax just means they lose those working years for their eventual retirement, assuming SS isn't insolvent by then.

Re:*First post..

[Registered Coward v2]

If teachers were paid on performance, they'd be earning zero per year. But hey, if you think they should be earning $100k/year for 9 months of work while your kid learns nothing, then you pay for it. I certainly won't.

If it were as simple as that. The reality is a classroom id often full of kids who don't really want to learn, expect to get an A just for trying, and have parents who whine and cry whenever their little darling get's less than a 100 despite not actually doing the work. Oh, yea, it's the teacher's fault that students don't learn. Discipline them for acting up? How dare you; obviously it's your fault he or she did what they did. Frankly, some of the things I've heard teachers say they've been called would earn you a fist in your face in most other environments. Sure, there are bad teachers, but there are many more who really care and try and finally get fed up and quit because the crap they put up with isn't worth it. 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. Unfortunately, it is simply less hassle to pass them and let life eventually hit them with a clue by four than actually hold them accountable to some semblance of performance.

Of course, it's getting worse - I've spoken with college professors who say they get calls from parents complaining about kid's grades and expecting them to do something about it.

Re:*First post..

[rhsanborn]

Nope, parents would never go for their children doing something so degrading. Their child is the next astronaut/President/CEO... Which is probably the biggest problem with the American education system. There is no enforcement at home, and parents aren't willing to believe that they need to put an effort into raising their children. They don't support schools or schooling, they don't encourage their children to complete the coursework, and any attempts to grade a child at his level is often met with the teacher being hauled in front of an administrator to have a meeting with an angry parent about why she's not being fair to poor Johnny the astronaut.

Re:*First post..

[LatencyKills]

I agree - teachers are paid far too little (and no, I'm not a teacher either). How's this for a solution: upon graduation from high school you pick 3 teachers that have been the most influential in your life. 0.1% of your income thereafter (until all three have passed away) is divided amongst those teachers. With about 100 students per year, some of them presumably going on to become successful, it could add up to a fair chunk of change. Good teachers could actually earn a good wage that way (whoever Bill Gates chooses could become rich), and bad teachers would very quickly find themselves on the lower end of the income curve, perhaps making a system that actually removes bad teachers from the fold.

Re:*First post..

[mark_hill97]

Way to troll, I had several PHDs teaching me through my education. Three in High School and one in middle school. At no point did creationism ever come up, evolution was taught by the biology teacher, and the heath class passed out condoms. Your opinion of our education system is vastly skewed by the media who over reacts (maybe rightly) to each incident.

Re:*First post..

[SEWilco]

Their work isn't in the public domain unless they're federal employees or their local laws place their work in the public domain. But it would be better for the educational system if more material were easily available. State legislators should place that work in the public domain so it can be easily reused, but encourage teachers to produce it. Teachers do get paid by the school to create lesson plans, but they should be able to sell or retype it into a marketable package on their own time. If there is a lot of public domain educational material, higher prices will be paid for it being organized or for new material.

Notice, however, that this only applies to material created as part of their job. Work created outside of the job environment still belongs to the teacher. School contracts might have to be more specific about the definition of school work. A teacher can mix their own protected work into a collection and sell the package, just as book authors do now. There is no requirement that the specific public domain material be identified; if buyers prefer that PD work be identified then they'll only buy such material.

Re:*First post..

[natehoy]

At least your school had principles. Mine only had principals. :)

Re:*First post..

[Attila Dimedici]

Teachers have *minimum* 4 year degrees, the median household doesn't. You can only pro-rate a teachers salary like that by counting days, not hours - and teachers are paid hourly.

Did you miss the part where the average salary with a bachelors degree is $45000? And why can't you pro-rate the salary? On average teachers make over $51,000 a year. That means when you add up the money they get paid for their hourly wage the average teacher makes a little over $51,000 a year. If they worked the additional hours the two to three months they have off at the hourly wage they are paid, they would make approximately $68,000 a year. Teacher's are well paid, as they should be.
The problem with education in the U.S. has nothing to do with teachers' salaries.
All that being said, the copyright on the lesson plans developed by a teacher should belong to the teacher. If someone wants to pay that teacher for that lesson plan, that money belongs to that teacher, not the school.

Re:*First post..

[Glothar]

I don't know about you, but my job cannot claim copyright or ownership of any of the work I do outside the office. And of the couple dozen teachers I know, only a couple of them write up their lesson plans during "contract hours" (the hours they are contracted to work).

If someone makes a lesson plan at 9pm at night, why in hell does the government have any say in how its used?

Now, I'm a fan of openness and sharing and I'd love to see a Public Domain (or GPLed) repository of good lesson plans, but your argument that the government has any ownership of these ideas is based on the (laughably) misguided idea that teachers write lesson plans during the day.

And, as for your "supply and demand" comment, I could argue the exact opposite: If teachers were paid more, more qualified people would consider it as a career option instead of anything else. The rate of attrition for teachers suggests that view is perhaps a little more reasonable.

Re:*First post..

[Glothar]

I understand people's hatred of unions (damn them for trying to rip power from the wealthy!), but for most people, hatred of the teachers unions are less about wanting better teachers and more about being upset at a small number of bad teachers. Many states outlaw teachers unions and many of those that don't prevent the unions from having any teeth (by preventing strikes, forcing arbitration, and so forth).

People like to trot out examples of how unions have protected bad (sometimes criminal) teachers, and I won't say I disagree that those are bad situations. However, its not nearly as bad as the number of teachers who would be fired for being gay, Democratic (or Republican), male in a "female" position (or vice versa), a bad coach, not a coach, or simply in a non-marriage relationship.

I wish the world were a nice enough place that we could ditch unions and get rid of bad teachers. However, I live in the real world. For every bad teacher I've seen protected by a union, I've seen another forced out of their position by the union and other teachers and administrators. And for each of them, there are probably two or three teachers who parents wanted removed for almost criminal reasons.

I had one teacher who was brought before the school board to argue for his job. His crime? "Not providing a supportive environment." The real problem: He had been named the head coach for boys basketball two years earlier and hadn't had a winning season yet. Another teacher was almost fired for "inappropriate behavior around females". Of course, no girl actually accused him of anything. It's just that he was the coach of the girls basketball team and a bunch of parents felt that the head coach should be a woman. Another was almost fired because she started dating a new man and that was viewed as "being an inappropriate role model" despite the fact that it was done as privately as possible (in a small town).

I've known teachers who were fired for being gay. I know teachers who were fired for wearing the "wrong clothes" on weekends. Many of the teachers I know right now pick bars to go to based on the fact that none of their children's parents will be there. They are basically forced to hide every aspect of their personal lives because nothing is off limits to insane parents. Often, the only protection they have is the pooled legal resources of the local teachers union.

The problem here is the public and how they treat teachers. The last thing they ever consider is to trust teachers more. If you raised the public's opinion of teachers, you'd have less attrition. Don't be so ignorant that you think that good teachers can't see who the bad teachers are. If you give them trust and quit tying them all up with the same rope, they'll get rid of the bad teachers for you.

Re:*First post..

[edumacator]

I would like to think I'm a decent teacher, and I loathe that there are teachers in the system stealing a salary, so in theory I love the idea of performance based pay, but the problem comes when you start to try and determine what are the indicators for good performance.

Standardized tests are what people generally assume would be the measure, but I have some issues with teachers beginning to teach the test. I hope that wouldn't happen, but I know some teachers that would do it for the money. Those are the same ones who get masters or doctorates from questionable universities rather than from a school that would help them do their jobs better.

More importantly, many good teachers, who work well with lower performing students, often get a disproportionate number of kids that have academic issues. Counselors and administrators tend to wink, wink those kids into a class with teachers they know are good. Not a bad move, but if we were paid based on students scores, the good teacher would be punished.

The major issue that causes the most problems is implementation. Invariably, states and school boards try very hard to make these things work, but they don't have the money or the follow through to create a valid measure of student success. So, unfortunately, even if there is in theory a great means of paying teachers based on performance, the implementation will almost certainly be flawed.

I'd like to see administrations have the ability for fire bad teachers which would alone get rid of a large part of the problem. Let's start there.

Re:*First post..

[all5n]

"We should be paying teachers twice what they are now and expecting the very best for it."

I agree. But that is not going to happen until we can get rid of the teachers unions. They ensure that bad teachers do not get fired, and that all teachers are paid the same without regard to talent. Basically the opposite of a meritocracy.

Expecting anything other than mediocrity under those conditions is a denial of reality.

Re:*First post..

[Glothar]

Most teachers have a contracted work day (7:30pm to 3:30pm locally).

In this area, this means that they are "on the clock" during that time and free to leave to do their own thing beyond that. They can be obligated to attend meetings beyond these hours, but only when officially scheduled. It's common for teachers to stay an hour after "contract" to work on grading or lesson plans, and its equally common for them to go home and do yet more work that night.

Since teachers unions are outlawed here and striking is illegal, the only recourse the teachers have against abusive treatment by parents and administrators is to "Work To Contract", meaning that they work the hours they are paid for.

This is only slightly less debilitating than a full strike. Students get cookie-cutter lessons and quickly fall behind schedule. Schools double or triple their paper usage as teachers fill students time with worksheets instead of learning activities. Assignments don't get graded. Grades don't get done on time. Sporting events are rescheduled. Plays and concerts are canceled.

It happens every five or so years. Apparently, that's how long it takes parents to remember just how much work teachers put in beyond what their contracts say they should.

Re:*First post..

[Belial6]

How is it that every single teacher makes less than the average wage of a public school teacher? Based on the anecdotale evidence, there must be some tiny secret group of public school teachers that make several hundred thousand dollars a year.

Re:*First post..

[Mr. Freeman]

You are a stupid fuck. Alright, now that that's out of the way, let's have a rational argument:

Creationism is not science, it's religion. You have no scientific evidence or support of creationism. Thus, there is not a valid challenge here. Science is still science because it does not address anything that cannot be investigated scientifically. Just as science cannot issue a valid challenge to religion (as any scientific claim is countered with "god did it that way to test us" or similar) religion cannot issue a valid challenge to science (as any religious claim can not be supported with scientific evidence).
Go ahead and teach creationism in bible study or a religious studies class, but it is not science and therefore should not be taught in science class.

Furthermore, evolution makes absolutely no statement about the origins of the universe. The theory you're looking for is called "the big bang", not evolution. Thus, any challenge religion attempts (I say attempts because it cannot, as shown above, actually issue a valid challenge) to have against evolution regarding the origin of the universe is invalid because it has nothing to do with the beginning of the universe. You might as well try to argue the creation of the universe against the intermediate value theorem (a calculus concept), it simply makes no sense.

As for the disclaimers put on textbooks, they make no sense either. Nothing in science can ever be proven absolutely for every situation. It's simply that the effect is observed and the calculations are shown to be correct for every imaginable instance and thus we call it a "theory". We cannot prove that gravity exists absolutely everywhere in the entire universe, but every single experiment ever conducted has shown it to be true. We see it here on earth, on the moon, we can see the effects of gravity on the stars, etc. It is possible, although very, very, unlikely that one day we will discover a piece of matter that does not act like it should with respect to gravity. If and when that time comes, the theory of gravity will have to be reworked.

However, it should be noted that science is not simply "I observe this effect, therefore we'll call it a theory". There is experimentation, calculation, etc. All experiments MUST be repeatable. All calculations MUST be verifiable. Religion is neither of these things. We can't test for god (or the lack of it). If we could, the experiment wouldn't be repeatable. For example, let's say there was a case of cancer in a patient that suddenly went into remission, 6 months later the patient is cancer free. You say "it was a miracle from god". We can't test for this. There's no experiment we can do that will show a divine influence on the patient. It's also not repeatable. If we give another patient cancer in the exact same way, the miracle would not happen twice. (We know this because there are a lot of people with cancer and this hasn't happened before).

In short, "god did it" is not science, it's religion.

As for abstinence only sex education. You're presenting a straw man argument. No one is encouraging teenagers to have sex before marriage. Furthermore, no one is suggesting that teen pregnancy is a good thing. These are not arguments presented by your opposition and therefore warrant no further consideration. (The fact that you mentioned them means that you are either confused about the arguments actually being presented, or that you are intentionally attempting to mislead your opposition).

Your statement about "most abstinence organizations... birth control methods" has no support. Please provide a link to some study that was done or something similar. unfortunately, I cannot take your word for it, just as I don't expect you to take mine if I were to say "most abstinence organizations do NOT teach birth control methods". I also cannot take your word that you are a former president of an abstinence organization, just as I don't expect you to take mine if I say "I am a former king of England

What questions?

[JorDan Clock]

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.

Re:What questions?

[Lehk228]

they aren't charging the students, they are selling plans to other teachers. so that less experienced teachers can free up time and buy a plan for something they are having a tough time coming up with good ideas for.

this marketplace should be very good for both new teachers needing ideas and experienced teachers with the skills to put together great lessons.

Re:What questions?

[Bruce Perens]

they aren't charging the students

Yet.

The world needs more Open Source curricula. Let's take the resource we've already paid for and use them to help educate everyone.

Re:What questions?

[backwardMechanic]

I fail to see how this raises any questions too. The schools pay the teachers, the lesson plans belong to the school.

I work for a university. Any work-related ideas I come up with belong to the university. In exchange, I get paid, even when I'm not thinking of anything useful. If you write software for a living, you can't go home and sell your days coding, it belongs to your employer. It's not compulsory, it's an exchange where you get money to buy shiny things and your employer get whatever they pay you for. No different for teachers. Poor pay is a different story, and doesn't change this one.

Re:What questions?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I fail to see how this raises any questions too. The schools pay the teachers, the lesson plans belong to the school.

Unless the employment contract explicitly transfers ownership of creative works to the employer then the lesson plans legally do not belong to the school. 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.

Higher taxes needed

[DNS-and-BIND]

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.

Re:Higher taxes needed

[Entropius]

What do childfree people have to do with taxes?

I know a few childfree types, and they are all in favor of higher spending on education for everybody else's kids. I think you're tilting at a straw man here; there's no indication that people without kids are opposed to education spending.

Re:Higher taxes needed

[lastgoodnickname]

uh, except for all the ones who do complain, you're entirely correct.

Re:Higher taxes needed

[hazem]

You don't have any kids, own a home, and pay a ton of school taxes - what about the jerk down the road who has 5 children and lives in an apartment?

I have no kids and pay property taxes because I own a house (with the bank). And sure, there are people who are poor with lots of kids and maybe they're renting. I have no problem funding the schools and here are some thoughts:

1) even if the guy is renting, the owner of the apartment is paying the same taxes and that will have to be covered by the rent
2) if those kids are poor, the very best thing we can do to ensure they don't stay poor the rest of their lives is to educate them well
3) even if I don't have kids, I benefit from others' kids being educated because they'll have better jobs, make more money, and buy the stuff my company sells
4) the taxes I pay that support schools are entirely local taxes. That means I have a much better chance of being able to influence how they are used

As a grown-up, I pay taxes for a lot of things and many of those don't directly benefit me. However I also realize that living in a country founded on democratic principles, these taxes are my responsibility and duty to pay.

As for teachers selling lesson plans, I am concerned that teachers should be using their "on the clock" prep periods to create lesson plans (that's what teachers I know do, or claim to do). Or, if it's part of the contractual obligation of their jobs to produce these plans (even if they end up doing it "at home"), and that's part of what they're already getting paid for, it doesn't seem right that they should be then able to sell them to other teachers/school-districts. And are they starting with resources that their districts already bought? And are they using paid-for class time to test and refine these plans?

And who is actually paying for them? Is the money paid the personal money of the teachers or are they charging their school districts the cost of the materials? It wouldn't be right if my school district is buying lesson plans and then the teachers are tweaking them and then turning around and selling them.

I think it boils down to the idea that if the teachers are already being paid to make lesson plans, then those plan are "work for hire" and they should not be able to sell them and profit yet again.

Re:Higher taxes needed

[dunkelfalke]

As some fellow slashdotter has got in his signature: I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.

Re:Higher taxes needed

[wkurzius]

As for teachers selling lesson plans, I am concerned that teachers should be using their "on the clock" prep periods to create lesson plans (that's what teachers I know do, or claim to do).

Following our district's format for lesson plans, it usually takes a couple of hours to plan lessons for the week. We get 50 minutes a day for a prep. In that time you need to contact parents, make copies, set up your classroom for the days activities, go to various meetings, and generally recuperate mentally since it's the only other time of the day besides your 30-minute lunch where you don't have 20-25 children hanging around. I could include grade papers in that list, but that's usually incredibly time consuming as well so most leave that for home.

I don't agree with the selling of lesson plans as I believe in having these resources available freely, but what this is a quick fix to a complicated problem: teachers not getting paid enough while not having enough time in the workday to achieve what is asked of them.

Bind not the mouths of the kine....

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Married to a teacher...

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Peanuts Compared to Textbook Rip-Offs

[rueger]

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.

Lesson plans!=Textbooks

[kklein]

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.

Re:Lesson plans!=Textbooks

[tburkhol]

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.

That surprises me. Most U's - certainly most research U's - do exactly that. They get first refusal on any patents, inventions, etc. They get credit on any publications (at least in the sense that you declare your affiliation, at most in the sense of acknowledging internal funding). IP may be your bread and butter, but most universities want credit for encouraging you and a slice of the pie if you make one.

It's interesting that most times the first /. thread under a 'university/IP' thread will be how anything produced in the course of government contract or employ should be in the public domain, but here is a thread applauding people for making a personal profit from that same material. Maybe it's the difference between poor, overworked teachers and rich, lazy professors. Maybe its the difference between patents and copyrights. It's just an interesting contrast.

Re:Lesson plans!=Textbooks

[UserChrisCanter4]

What he's talking about are products I've seen referred to as "scripted lesson plans," and he's correct; they're not just textbooks and workbooks, and they're not the "seeds" of lessons.

I have never actually had to use these products in my own teaching experience, but I have seen them and we did work with some of them in my teaching classes in college. Imagine a general math concept such as fractions. There are companies who sell entire packets of lesson plans, designed to be implemented by every teacher in the district and to be used for X weeks for fractions. The packet is three hole punched so that it can be easily distributed in binder form, and really is a collection of "canned" lesson plans. The ones I encountered went so far as to break a day's worth of instruction down into a format like this:

Warm up: 10 Mins [use warmup transparency 11a]
Lesson: 12 Mins [use overhead transparency 11b]
Exercise: 25 Mins [use worksheet 11c]
Suggested homework: [worksheet 11d]
Sample modifications for students with disabilities: X, Y, Z
The real version is much more detailed, of course; the ones I saw for English classes typically consumed three pages for a 45 minute lesson.

Typically, a district would purchase an entire years' worth of lessons and put teachers through extensive in-service training to discuss the proper way to implement such programs.

It's appealing on one hand; as you probably know, planning lessons is difficult, time-consuming, and requires a lot of trial and error. I wasn't truly happy with most of my lessons until after the third or fourth time I'd taught and refined them. These products take out the guesswork. The lessons have been tested (the companies pushing them talk a lot about how much testing goes into their development), and their pacing honestly looked pretty good. On the other hand, of course, it's deeply insulting to the teachers involved; it reduces us to robots, removes the opportunities for creativity, and generally brings everyone down to the same level of mediocrity. I assume this is probably why his father's school had to go all the way to termination - if you let one person off the hook on canned lessons, then everyone will want to.

He's right though. Such products do exist.

Not true

[langelgjm]

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.

Nail on the Head

[crmarvin42]

You've hit the nail on the head right here

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.

Dinners out, mortgage payments, credit card bills

[Zarniwoop]

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.

You all have no idea

[rlp122]

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.

don't forget

[ProfBooty]

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.