As the Communications Director for the New England Institute, I am always on the look out for new and exciting resources to share. Some are obvious, and I get them right out to our students, our staff, or our broader audience via email or social media. Some literally have had to show up in our office emails about a dozen times before I start to pay attention to them, which is the case with the website teacherspayteachers.com.
The first few times our Executive Director, Catherine Ring, mentioned the website to me I thought, “Who can afford to pay other teachers for classroom resources? This is a joke!” In our own school district education budgets have been drastically reduced, and I couldn’t imagine how sharing such a resource would be looked upon as useful. But again in my email the other day was a link to their newsletter, and I decided I should take some time to review the website, and see what they were really offering, rather than assuming that somehow I knew.
Let me start by saying how wrong I was. After spending just a few minutes looking around I quickly realized that although much of the content was for sale, there was still A TON of free resources available at the click of the mouse. Powerpoints, PDFs, Documents, Prezis, zip files (and the list goes on)… in a variety of subjects and grade levels, and everything I clicked on looked helpful, looked fun, and looked like something we should definitely be sharing.
Every click I made while perusing the website reminded me that Teachers Get Teachers, and it became obvious that that was the underlying cause of the website’s apparent success. Teachers wanted to gain insight from other teachers, and as one teacher said, “I feel like I have a thousand teachers in my classroom everyday.”
So, I encourage you to read some of their recent blogposts, check out their free resources, review this week’s newsletter, become a member (for free) and never again judge a resource by its title!
