Teachers Pay Teachers TPT

What is Teachers Pay Teachers? 

Teachers Pay Teachers is an online marketplace for teaching and learning resources. Many different types of resources are available such as worksheets, booklets, presentations, videos, images, diagrams, certificates, classroom displays, posters, and more. These materials come in appropriate and common file formats and include popular app-based files such as Canva.

With millions of great free teacher resources from amazing TpT sellers, there are just so many original educational resources for teachers to use in their own classrooms.

The subject coverage includes everything likely to be covered in a school's curriculum, from purely academic such as math and English, to personal development and social-emotional education.

You can also sign up for a free account to Teacher Pay Teacher's Easel tool for enhancing teaching and assessment with premade resources. There is also a flip side to buying on Teachers Pay Teachers; you can become a seller!

If you've been a teacher for any length of time, you'll already have made lots of resources. Some might be sales-ready, some might need a little polish, and you might have an idea for a collection you could make especially to sell.

People sell on Teachers Pay Teachers for different reasons. Some do it to make a little extra money to balance out what they spend on their lessons. Others make a substantial second income, and a few have turned it into a business.

You can test out being a seller for free, and if it grows into something you wish to pursue, you can become a premium seller with extra tools and benefits to help your TPT success develop further.

What we love about Teachers Pay Teachers

Buyers

Every teacher recognises the need for a quick source of resources. Planning effective lessons takes time, and producing supporting resources only adds to it. Sometimes it isn't the time but the inspiration that is lacking.

Teachers Pay Teachers is an effective solution. It is not ideal for teachers to spend their money to produce their lessons, but spending a couple of dollars for a resource, compared to spending an hour making it, often seems like a good trade. You can also use the material in future lessons, and its value (and time-saving) will only improve.

The TPT marketplace provides an assurance of quality and safety that can be lacking in other places. Sellers want to protect their reputations by maintaining the quality of their output, and TPT adds a layer of protection to reduce the possibilities of malware.

Buyers can rate and review each resource. This facility drives the quality of the resources up and helps potential buyers determine its suitability. In a nice touch, TPT rewards those who leave reviews with credits to spend on future resources, so everybody gains from a review. 

Sellers

If you're the teacher everybody comes to asking to 'borrow' your resources; you're ideal to become a seller on TPT. Your resources need to be clear, attractive, and accurate. You can design them to support established teaching methods or create ones to present a unique take on relating a topic.

Your existing material could be ready to upload with some checking or extra polish. Being a seller has the obvious benefit of potentially generating a little extra income, which you could use to offset the cost of the resources you buy from TPT. Every sale is also a confidence boost, especially when it comes as a result of the reputation you have built with previous uploads.

What skills does it teach?

Teachers Pay Teachers contains lesson materials for a wide range of topics for all ages. Where appropriate, the site maps the resources against the Common Core State Standards. The site also has generated mappings taken from the CCSS to match them against the state standards of those not using Common Core. This functionality depends on whether the structure of a state's standards allows mapping to happen, so not all states (for example, Texas) have this option.

What age is it appropriate for?

Teachers Pay Teachers is a service entirely devoted to adults who are teaching. This obviously includes school teachers, but it is also suitable and beneficial for parents who homeschool their kids.

Is Teacher Pay Teachers easy to use?

Buyers and sellers will find using TPT an easy experience. Each has relevant tools. Buyers can conduct detailed searches to refine the results to those applicable to their needs. Sellers have the choice of just seeing how it goes, or if they want to build up their TPT side hustle, there are tools for monitoring traffic and purchases to inform plans.

How will students benefit?

Students won't use TPT directly. However, kids will benefit from the improved and relevant materials their teachers can source from the site.

How will parents benefit?

All parents can sign up for an account to Teachers Pay Teachers. They might want to do this to support their kids in specific topics. Your child might need extra work in a particular section of a subject, and you can buy material from TPT specific to that area.

Parents in general, and those who homeschool their kids won't always have the knowledge and experience to choose materials at the best level. The CCSS mapping of TPT's resources makes choosing age-appropriate material easy. Even those whose kids are not following the CCSS or one of the State Standards mapped by TPT can still gauge whether the download is suitable.

Homeschooling parents don't enjoy the colleague support of teachers in schools or the wealth of pre-existing material to pick from. Teachers Pay Teachers can provide significant time savings. It needn't be expensive either, as you can select low-priced, highly focused resources to match specific lessons rather than buy a whole topic's worth.

How will teachers benefit?

Buyers

Time - if you need a resource quickly or don't have the time or energy to make everything you need, you will find something suitable among the TPT offerings. 

Quality - as well as saving time to make resources, if graphic design skills are not your strength, you can still have inspiring resources for your lessons.

Specialisms - teaching a topic outside of your comfort zone isn't easy, but having ready-made resources gives you a starting structure. 

Sellers

Money - TPT has turned into a handy income stream for some teachers.

Motivation - knowing you can create resources to sell and use can inspire you to learn new software to improve productivity.

How much does Teachers Pay Teachers app cost?

Buyers

As an individual teacher, you can buy single resources from Teachers Pay Teachers without any recurring costs.

You can use each resource as you see fit in your lessons, although you cannot share them with colleagues or incorporate them into other resources you share. If you want to share them, you can do so legally by buying an additional license, which usually has a discount applied compared to the first purchase.

School administrators can register for TPT For Schools, making it easier for schools to manage purchasing and allocating licenses and resources among staff.

Sellers

If you choose to make your resources available on Teachers Pay Teachers, you can do this for free, but if you pay for a premium yearly subscription, you will get advantages. These include keeping more of the sale price for any of your resources.

Switching from the basic tier to the premium is easy, and the benefits kick in immediately. Should you decide later to drop back to the basic account, you can still maintain your seller presence on the site and still profit from any downloads.

Is Teachers Pay Teachers safe to use?

Teachers Pay Teachers is not aimed at children. 

Downloading any file from any source carries a risk of malware. TPT's guidance states that protections are in place to minimise this risk, but you should also ensure your computer's security is up to date and you use sensible precautions.

What can Teachers Pay Teachers improve on?

Teachers not based in the US can buy and sell on the site, but the app's home market shows through in its focus on state standards. Fortunately, the Common Core State Standards are easily readable, so teachers following other standards or curricula can use them to map the available resources to their requirements.

Nevertheless, as unrealistic as it might be to expect every resource on TPT to have readily-available links to curricula in the rest of the world, we'd love to see it.

Overall rating of the app.

Teachers Pay Teachers is a great resource for teachers and parents to bookmark. Whenever you need lesson resources quickly or for a topic you don't consider your strength, put its search tools to the test and see what you can find. You'll reduce your planning time, which you can use to get other work tasks done or take for some well needed rest. 

For buyers, there are no financial commitments to using TPT, so it is easy and cheap to see what it can offer.

We also recommend TPT for those interested in selling. The site handles the admin and gives you efficient tools and a ready-made marketplace. Now you know what Teachers Pay Teachers is about from this review; we recommend you click straight to it and take a first-hand look at this five-star service.