The 3D Teacher

As an educator, I’ve always been passionate about sharing my resources with other teachers. I’ve had several blogs, been active on Twitter, presented at conferences, and been a lead teacher, coach, or administrator my whole career. That’s why I was initially excited when I heard about TeachersPayTeachers.com several years ago – a platform that allows educators to buy and sell resources created by other teachers. However, the more I learned about TPT, the more concerned I became. With so many sellers and products on the site, how can we be sure that the quality is consistently high? And with some sellers making thousands of dollars a month, is TPT really about sharing resources, or is it just another way for some teachers to profit off of others or become EduCelebs? How do we protect copyright? These are valid concerns, and ones that I’ve grappled with as I’ve considered whether or not to sell my own resources on TPT.

In the end, I’ve decided to open a TPT store to share my resources for a couple of reasons:

1. I need a way to organize and distribute my resources that is visible, easy to navigate, and searchable. While I’m probably capable of doing that with a blog or a website (even monetizing it), that takes a lot of time and some luck to drive traffic to it. I prefer to use a preestablished platform.
2. I have experience in the standards based grading space, which is underrepresented/misrepresented on TPT. I hope to use the platform to spur a discussion into improved grading practices.
3. I have created many Google Apps Scripts for the educational space, and I’d like to share them. They save time and money. I believe that teachers are the best at creating solutions for their own technology-based problems.
4. I believe that teachers should be compensated for their creations, and TPT allows for that.

In the end, my goal in posting things on TPT is to help disrupt traditional grading practices, spread the idea of educator-created tech solutions, and share some of my high school ELA materials with others. I’m hoping that through this blog and the store on TPT, I can add my voice and ideas to that of others in the space. I feel I have some unique things to share.

Here is the link to my store: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/The-3d-Teacher

Let me know what you think.