"When Paul Edelman was working as a middle school teacher in New York City during the early '00s, his school gave him none of the lesson plans, handouts, and workbooks necessary for running a classroom. "When school ended at 3 p.m., it was really just the beginning of my workday," says Edelman. He says his first year was "brutal," and his second and third years were only marginally better.
Edelman's experience is hardly unique; many young teachers burn out in part because their schools expect them to generate all of their own materials. "I cried every night," says former teacher Amy Berner. "Every night you sit down and think, 'I am completely unprepared for tomorrow.'"
Out of such pain came an idea: "What if we could create a vast repository of resources that already worked for other teachers," he asks, "juiced with free market forces?"
In 2006, Edelman started Teachers Pay Teachers, an online marketplace"...
One can't help but wonder if some of the material posted for sale was lifted from someone else first. I have two siblings who are teachers - and a third who has a degree in education but decided that putting up with other people's brats was not worth it regardless of how good the pay was and they both create their own material and modify what others have done to suit their classroom. So if one of my siblings puts up for sale material that they got from someone else, is that plagiarism?
