Agreed. It would be like being a drug researcher for Merck, and when you come up with the cure for cancer, you sell it yourself saying that you came up with the breakthrough idea when you were on the crapper that morning.
As a professional, you have contracted to the employer the product and proceeds of your work.
this kinda made me laugh, not because its a bad idea, its a supremely great idea, its just not the American way. Especially once government gets involved.
I seriously think its not possible for this country to ever pull its head out of its ass.
I agree that a good teacher doesn’t need a “conventional” lesson plan to teach a good lesson but that doesn’t mean we don’t get sapped of good ideas when we’ve been up to 3am grading essays. Similarly, if we’ve not taught a course text in the past, coming up with activities is a bit intimidating and forces an instructor to question if they are focusing on the right things. Yes, district established essential questions often attend to this but they only do so in an abstract way. This is where the benefit of the lesson plans come in…
Many comments echo a similar sentiment: that a lesson only becomes “good” through effective execution and thus the purchase of a lesson plan is pointless. I unequivocally agree that a lesson is only as good as it’s teacher. I disagree that this makes acquiring lesson plans from the internet whether they are purchased or found for free. In my experience, cross referencing other teachers’ materials has deepened by own instruction by ensuring that what I teach is valid. Additionally, it often infuses my work with more creativity because I have been exposed to an alternative perspective and can now adapt a method or idea I may not have considered myself.
What’s more, the article doesn’t attempt to define “good” nor does it suggest that the materials, bought or sold, promise effective instruction. The purpose of the article is to question who has ownership of these artistic/ intellectual domains…
Some believe that because a teacher creates these lessons as the result of their employment, it in essence belongs to the employer. “jtagain” draws the following simile likening teachers who sell their lesson plans to a Merck employee discovering and selling a cure for cancer. Perhaps if that simile was extended and clarified as follows it would more appropriately capture the nature of question at hand: Teachers selling their lesson plans is like a Merck employee who works in a department that strives to cure cancer. The Merck employee, guided by passion, sets up a home laboratory fitted with the necessary equipment and works after hours on his own experiments. In this home lab, with his own materials and equipments he discovers the cure which he might share with Merck but is essentially his own discovery… Sure, the experience at Merck may have informed his discovery but does that mean the corporation has ownership of said discovery because of the employee’s affiliation? I would think not. However, were I or any other teacher, to sell materials created with other members of their faculty for as a project specifically designed for the school we’d be having a different conversation. The mere thought of selling a lesson, rubric, or unit plan that was in anyway developed with another individual or for my school, has never even skidded across the surface of my consciousness. Those materials do not belong to me, they are the school’s domain and I would never publish them as my own. I will, however, continue to publish and sell guiding questions I write for the texts I teach and the differentiated activities I develop because they belong to me and me alone. Also, selling these materials somehow (possibly illogically) makes me feel a whole lot better that I wrote guiding questions instead of going out with my friends on a Saturday afternoon.
I acknowledge that by becoming a teacher, I’ve accepted a certain lifestyle… I will never have a summer home and I will always worry about my student loans… I am fine with that because I love what I do more than anything else in this world. But that doesn’t mean I don’t struggle with the fact that though I am paid a salary for certain working hours as stipulated in my contract I work at least 4 hours (usually more) everyday outside of school, outside the bounds of my contractual agreement, in order to do my job right. Selling my lesson plans helps abate that struggle.
Legal questions aside, I think it’s very bad policy for school districts to treat lesson plans as works for hire. Schools already have trouble attracting and retaining talent, and cutting off this source of income to teachers won’t help. Also, I would expect the best lesson plans to be more expensive, so the teachers with the best plans would make the most money from them, which is a way of introducing the equivalent of merit pay without costing the schools anything. Finally, a market for lesson plans would encourage teachers to learn from each other, which should improve the quality of teaching overall.
But by the same token, you are essentially imposing a tax on other teachers who feel they need to buy these lessons. Those teachers, who may eventually become more comfortable making their own plans, may leave the field because of depressed wages. This is particularly problematic since many of the people who feel the need to buy lessons would be newer, less confident teachers.
Although I am on the fence, I can understand the administration’s side because the lessons that sell well do so (presumably) because they are well put together, clear, instructive, and “field tested”. Teachers who sell these lessons are conducting what amounts to market research in their classrooms.
Either way, I think the real takeaway from this is the fact that teachers feel so underpaid, and under-appreciated that they feel the need to do this. Even worse that the money is likely coming directly out of other teachers’ pockets.
Soon Casio will pay teachers directly for using their graphing calculators, and teachers can work in product placement into their lessons. Where does it stop? Not that I blame the teachers, I just think we need to think long and hard about where and when we want to introduce market norms into a situation where social norms are predominate. Teachers often share their lesson plans. I would hate to get to a point where that sense of professional courtesy is perverted by the profit motive.
Hopefully, this will spur the Department of Education to regulate and centralize educational tools and lesson plans, while providing recognition and compensation for those who contribute.
I haven’t read the article either, but what is “company time?” First bell to dismissal? My wife works on her lesson plans at all hours OUTSIDE of the school day, and works (grading, writing lesson plans, etc) at least 20 hours per week outside of this time. With one prep period and a lunch, doing it all “on company time” is impossible. The district deserves dick if she decides to sell her lesson plans.
Joe
There’s no such thing as “company time” for teachers. If their contract does not specify that the district owns the teacher-generated lesson plans, then the teacher owns them. What’s so hard to understand about that?
This isn’t true everywhere. Plenty of areas have way too many teachers. In my district, we often receive hundreds of applications for each and every teacher opening. This is especially true at the elementary level.