The Cost of Lesson Plans: Selling Lessons Online

Monday, 11/16/2009

Image ©photoXpress.com

What is the true cost of a lesson plan? Beyond the 8 to 3, we know the long hours teachers across the country pour into unit plans, giving consideration to everything from national standards, to the personalities of individual students. Year after year, teachers revise and refine these lesson plans, to create a time-tested, effective teaching tool.

Should they be further compensated for this work?

The New York Times published an article Saturday about the recent rise in web-based lesson plan sales. Teachers who spend years creating lessons have taken to selling units online for anywhere between $.75-200 a lesson.

While some applaud these new teacher-entrepreneurs, others raise legal and ethical questions. The article suggests:

“While some of this extra money is going to buy books and classroom supplies in a time of tight budgets, the new teacher-entrepreneurs are also spending it on dinners out, mortgage payments, credit card bills, vacation travel and even home renovation, leading some school officials to raise questions over who owns material developed for public school classrooms.”

The article goes on to question how monetizing lesson plans hurts the open exchange of ideas that teachers experience when they share their work for free. Joseph McDonald, a professor at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University says:

“Teachers swapping ideas with one another, that’s a great thing. But somebody asking 75 cents for a word puzzle reduces the power of the learning community and is ultimately destructive to the profession.”

This web-based business seems too new to effectively evaluate at this time, but we’re interested to hear from you - do lesson plans that teachers create belong to the school district? Should they be allowed to sell them for personal gain? Does it hurt the teaching profession?

Posted by » walden
Tags »
Category » Education,In the News,