Teaching is my passion. It’s been a roller coaster ride of emotion, but I always seem to find my way back to a place where I am truly happy with what I do. One of the reasons that I got fired up about creating my own lessons and assignments is my discovery of Teachers Pay Teachers, a place where educators can buy and sell units, worksheets, quizzes, tests, etc. At first, I just used it as a way to save time by not reinventing the wheel when I needed to spice up a stagnant lesson. It’s so much easier to pay $1-$5 (my personal spending limit) on a ready-made assignment than to spend the time to think up and type out my own.
Then my job changed, and I was going to be teaching two grades that I hadn’t for the past few years, and I had the freedom and autonomy to decide what I wanted to do with my classes. Enter TPT. I realized as I was writing these new units that I could put them on TPT and maybe make a few bucks on the side. Well, I made over $100 the first month that I started selling products. It’s not much, but it was pretty exciting each time I would hear the cash register chime on my phone. Aside from the money, the best thing that happened was that I got excited to be creative and think outside the box about what I was teaching. That used to be the norm for me, but I had gotten away from that, simply using what was already available.
It’s been almost a year since I began selling, and sometimes I only make $20 in a month, but it’s passive income from something that I was going to be creating anyway. I’m excited to try some new ideas in the coming year, and see if I can really ramp up the creativity and interaction in my own classroom!
You can visit my store here: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Johnstons-Ela-Gems
