
Kindergarten Teacher Earns $700,000 by Selling Lesson Plans Online - MarlonPro
http://mashable.com/2012/05/17/teachers-pay-teachers/
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kghose
I have mixed feelings about this. I lived in India for almost a decade -
Calcutta to be precise, but I think what I have to say applies to most of
India.

What happens is that Teachers in schools start tutorial classes. Either singly
or in groups they set up tutorial homes and they recruit students from their
day jobs. Often there is a hidden implication that if you don't join the
tutorial (for which, of course you pay extra money) you will fare poorly in
class.

At best, the teachers put less effort into their regular job and students
suffer.

I would hate for this system to be adopted widely. Putting stuff online is a
little different, but I am very ambivalent about this kind of privatization of
education...

~~~
jedberg
This practice is illegal in the US. A teacher can't take money for tutoring
from their current students.

~~~
mh-
jedberg, you're not working at reddit anymore.. you have to use citations now
in internet discussions. ;)

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piato
I may be missing something rather obvious here, but I've read the article
three times, and can find no reference to 'coaching' or 'after-school
tutorials' at all here. Are they mentioned elsewhere?

As a former teacher, here is an example lesson plan:

AGE GROUP: Year 5 TOPIC: Introducing prime numbers

STARTER: Mixed multiplication table questions on board. MAIN ACTIVITY: Write
the number 92 on the board. Ask students whether '92' appears in any
multiplication table. When the answer '2' is received, stress that
multiplication tables do not end at 10 or 12, but continue on indefinitely.
Repeat for the numbers '999', '186', and '495'. Next, write the number 71 on
the board. Students will conclude that it does not appear in any 'tables'.
Explain that it does, offering a reward for the first correct answer. With or
without hinting, get the answer '1' or '71'. Offering a second reward, get the
second of the pair. Explain that every whole number is in the 'one' times
table and the 'itself' times table. However, such numbers are called 'prime'
if those are the only ones. Ask students to name other prime numbers below 50,
discussing suggestions.

Complete is_it_prime.doc. Students who finish quickly should attempt
is_it_prime_2.doc.

That's not meant to be particularly inspiring or anything, just
representative. As a teacher, you have a legal obligation to have such a plan
for every lesson you teach (this was true in the UK, can't speak for other
countries).

~~~
keithpeter
You would need a little more than that now. Differentiated outcomes &c

I get the impression that in the US they don't have a national curriculum or
external exams &c so the teacher has to do more long term planning on their
own.

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e28eta
I really don't understand the negativity here. I'm no expert on teaching, but
I've definitely heard that some teachers come up with lesson plans in their
first couple years teaching a subject, and then just re-use it for the rest of
their career (or until the standardized test changes). This seems like a huge
waste of effort, because there are so many other teachers covering the same
content, with largely similar lesson plans.

If customization is so important, what's wrong with applying it to a purchased
lesson plan?

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andyobryan
I forwarded this to my mother, who is a retired teacher. She was lauded for
her teaching abilities and always had top scores on her evaluations. They even
tried to get her to stay upon reaching the required years to retire, but
health / back issues forced her to retire.

I thought this would be great for some post-retirement income. She has years
of experience, so possibly, the planning part would come easy to her AND the
side benefit of not actually having to TEACH the little stink-pots...

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MarlonPro
Startup Ideas: Find what people need and build an app/product that will fill
those needs = $$$$

~~~
patio11
As the resident "Been there, done that" guy with regards to teachers I think
I'm 99.9% of the way to "You should _probably_ build something for businesses
instead -- for equivalent levels of savvy/work you'll get a lot more money
while suffering a lot less."

Teachers: $$

Businesses: $$$$$$$$$$$

I just got an email this morning from someone responding to an AdWords ad for
Appointment Reminder. The ad costs $8 a click, for reasons which will soon be
obvious. The contents of the email: "Quote me a price for X appointmnts a
month." I did. "OK, we want it." If they stay around for the year I just
earned several hundred copies of BCC with two emails and a few minutes of data
entry.

~~~
MarkMc
Hey Patrick it's great to hear that Appointment Reminder is doing well -
congratulations!

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tokenadult
I saw this link just after MarlonPro did, in the feed of a Facebook friend who
is an author on homeschooling. One comment by one of her friends was,
"Perpetuating lesson plans that may or may not actually be interesting to a
child and may actually turn a child off a topic? The teacher can keep her big
bucks. . . . although, wonder if you could do plans that promote independent
learning?" It is interesting to think about what could be involved in lesson
plans for kindergarten,

<http://www.mrsjumpsclass.com/>

<http://mrsjumpsclass.blogspot.com/>

and what puts kindergarten teachers, who are graduates of college major
programs in education in the usual case, in need of lesson plans for their
young pupils. Is there room for a lot of other market entrants in this market?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Pretty negative - so the lesson plans are crap, they don't promote independent
learming, the children are not interested. You read all that from the article?

Why not buy one, check it out? They are cheap, many are free. Its easy to
criticise, but almost as easy to have an informed opinion.

I can imagine many new teachers are glad to have an experienced educator guide
them. It can be challenging to have a fresh plan 180 days in a row. At the
least, these plans provide another viewpoint.

~~~
tokenadult
Thanks for your comment. I found more context about the teacher profiled in
the Mashable article in this older article from an Education Week blog:

[http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2011/09/teache...](http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teaching_now/2011/09/teacher_makes_230000_on_lesson_plans.html)

My initial surprise at the announcement that lesson plans sell that well stems
from

1) writing my own lesson plans, adapted to a particular group of students I
teach, and thus

2) thinking, don't most teachers plan their lessons for their particular
class, with its individual mix of students?

while also knowing

3) many materials provided by textbook publishers have somewhat of built-in
lesson plans.

So I'm still surprised to see that the market is as large as it evidently is
for canned lesson plans, but it is, and it appears that other teachers ought
to enter it.

~~~
JonnieCache
Just because you've purchased a canned lesson plan doesn't mean you have to
implement it exactly.

I imagine a lot of teachers are buying the plans to avoid 80% of the work, and
then adjusting them to fit their specific pupils.

And some of them are probably lazily teaching them straight off the shelf as
well. So it goes.

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protomyth
Long ago, I built a lesson plan generator for the LAP and e-LAP skill tests
(0-3 year olds). The teachers each put their activities designed to improve a
skill and it would print out the needed activities for each child after
testing. It was quite the hit. Never did go commercial, bit it did save a lot
of time and provided a weird form of networking via activity sharing across
centers.

Lesson plans are a big issue for pre-K also. You tend to have to do the plans
in a much more individualized way with not all of the kids at once. It was
quite a challenge just finding time to write up the plans based on the tests.
Automation was a huge gain.

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michaelfeathers
I'm surprised school systems aren't claiming "work for hire" copyright on the
lesson plans. I don't think they should, it's just that this is the way that
these things typically play out.

~~~
fromhet
The type of thing OP is talking about is actually quite common in Sweden, but
as a non-profit (on the teachers behalf, that is). My mother is a teacher and
I've worked in a school, and the use of <http://www.lektion.se/> is very
widespread. All the class plans there are free (as in money).

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Drbble
Teachers Pay Teachers, DonorsChoose

interesting that these teacher startups are founded by males from a female
dominated starting industry.

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brianobush
Of course, tax payers most likely footed the bill for her to come up with
those lesson plans.

~~~
encoderer
If you mean she's probably doing it in all the free time teachers usually have
while tax payers are lavishing her with a generous salary and benefits, then
yes you're right.

In reality teachers usually work long hours in dedication to their profession
and their students, and do so for far less money than most professionals with
that workload.

~~~
wcchandler
I was quite surprised by how true this was when my wife started teaching high
school math. I initially suspected 10~11 hours a day. Which I equated to my
days of going to college full time and working construction full time --
easily 11-12 hour days, 6 days a week. She does so much more. Her typical
schedule:

\- 4:45am, awake

\- 5:30am, out the door

\- 6:00am, gets to school

\- 6-8 she does whatever needs done for classes, meets with students, meets
with peers or administration

\- 8:00am, classes begin

\- 9:30am, break time for 1hr 30 minutes -- but students will come in during
this time to either make up tests, get extra help with something, or just do
work. She can also have meetings (again) with peers, administration or
sometimes parents.

\- 11:00am, lunch for 1hr -- but again, students will usually come in to do
whatever they need to do.

\- 12:00pm, next class

\- 1:30pm, next class

\- 3:00pm, school's out

\- 3-5, meetings with peers, getting ready for class tomorrow, emailing
parents, handling disciplinary issues, prints lesson plans or whatever else
needs done at school

\- 5:30pm, home

\- 6:00pm, eat and take a nap for however long she can get

\- 8:00pm, wake up from nap, grade papers, enter in grades (if grades aren't
posted online within 2 days she'll get about 5 emails a day from parents
asking about it)

\- 10:00pm, gets ready for bed

\- 11:30pm, can finally get to sleep due to thinking/preparing for the next
day.

She gets paid $36,000 a year. I have so much respect for her. Oh, I forgot to
tell you -- all her lesson plans change each semester. They don't have books
in half their classes -- they use a county wide "lesson plan" which must be
printed out for each student. The school system believes in "evolving"
education, so every semester they try to incorporate different topics or try
to approach different methodologies. While I commend them for that, it
negatively effects the teachers in excess busy work. If they used a printed
book for 10 years in a row, she'd do it once and be done, with variations
being in classes taught.

~~~
megablast
Come on, as someone who was a teacher for a while, lives with a teacher, and
knows lots of teachers this is very atypical. Nobody would be doing all of
these things every day, or even once a week. It is also quite common to have a
number of free periods each day, one day a week I had 3 hours off.

~~~
brianobush
judging by her salary and over-excitement, she must be new. After a while, she
most likely will realize all that work is unnecessary and work more
effectively (or burnout completely).

~~~
sopooneo
Almost all _good_ teachers start out with something approaching that level of
work. It is only by going through that phase that they have the backlog and
repertoire ready in advance later on. It can be a brutally hard profession.

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blinkingled
So what does this offer that Khan Academy doesn't for free? Looks like they
manage to use social media effectively and I haven't checked but may be they
have more targeted or traditional education friendly content over there?

~~~
eddie_the_head
Khan Academy does not offer lesson plans, just videos and an exercise/practice
framework.

This is marketplace for teachers to sell and buy lesson plans. Things like
worksheets for in-class work, homework to assign, ideas for projects to
assign, or material to supplement in-class instruction for the students. This
is actually a really smart and obvious idea, and well executed it seems.

