Selling teaching resources online saved me. Yes, you read that correctly. Creating and selling my teaching resources online saved me from losing myself in the midst of teacher burnout and sinking into depression. I’m creating the life I love.
I want to share with you – get real with you – about what happened to me, and how I came out the other side loving my life again. I want to share a secret with you about how you can also create the life you love.
My love for teaching almost died because of the endless demands for more rigor and teacher accountability. For years I created my own teaching resources because I love being able to accommodate my students’ diverse needs.
However, with the onset of Common Core and my school’s reaction to it, I was no longer allowed to use the teaching resources and mentor texts that I knew so well and loved – the same texts my students loved.
This broke my teacher heart.
School became a job that I showed up to every day, and I counted the days until the school year would end. I even calculated how many more years I had before retirement – at that time, 8 more years. My students suffered for it because I wasn’t their excited, happy teacher anymore.
I hoped switching schools would breathe new life into my career. It did provide a better atmosphere, but it didn’t quite heal my broken heart. The reason? The new rigorous textbooks.
On first glance the new textbooks seemed great. They were much smaller and weighed a lot less! Yet, my students struggled with the book. I needed to create teaching resources that would make the text more fun.
I put some heart back into my teaching resources.
My lessons needed more heart. So, I decided to try interactive notebooks in my classroom, but I didn’t know how to make them. Then, I Googled interactive notebooks, and I found Kayse Morris. (This was about four years ago.)
Her YouTube videos helped me to create beautiful teaching resources my students loved. My co-teachers even commented on how great they engaged and scaffolded our students. Because of Kayse’s videos, I decided to sell my teaching resources online on the TeachersPayTeachers website.
Every time I’d heard the little ka-ching sound on my iPhone app, I knew I’d sold something that teachers wanted. TeachersPayTeachers became my side hustle. Then, teachers asked for more of my interactive notebook teaching resources. With a full time teaching position, I tried to keep up with the demand! I knew then, that I was in business for real, and I had no idea what to do next.
I found the best business coach ever for selling teaching resources online.
This is when I knew I was onto something. That internet search for interactive notebooks brought me to Kayse Morris and her YouTube channel, but you’ll never believe what happened next!
In October of last year, I did an Insta-story about how Kayse’s tips and tricks helped me earn thousands of dollars last year selling myresources online on TeachersPayTeachers, and I tagged her in it. I wanted her to know how much those videos meant to me. Little did I know where my little Insta-story would lead me next.
Kayse emailed me and asked me for a favor. Y’all, I was jumping up and down in my classroom! I’d been following her, this amazing teacher-seller for years, and I knew this was going to be big. I just didn’t know how big. I didn’t even know what the favor was yet!
She asked me to create a five minute video about how she helped me to create and sell my resources online, which I did, of course. At this point, I had downloaded her free workbook, First 10 Steps to Selling Your Teaching Resources Online and completed it.
What I didn’t know is that Kayse had created a free sneak peak of her online video course for teachers about how to create their own online business selling teaching activities, and she used my video in her course to tell people how she helped me.
Of course, I was one of the first teachers to sign up for her course, Transform Your Resources, when it opened in November of 2018. Since then, my sales have tripled.
I rediscovered my self-worth selling my resources online.
Now, some teachers might think selling teaching resources online is questionable. However, I’ve shared my teaching resources for free for over 25 years with my colleagues. I live in Florida, one of the lowest paying states for teachers in the United States – ranked 46 out of 50. My county is one of the ten lowest paying counties in my state, even though we are one of the fastest growing.
Lesson plans and activities are valuable commodities to teachers and school districts who want to help their students succeed. A teacher’s time is also a valuable commodity. Teachers also buy teaching resources for their students because they want to enliven their classrooms and engage their students.
So, why not provide those things that teachers need more of – time and engaging, well-made classroom resources? I no longer feel guilty for selling online because I create excellent teaching resources and provide excellent customer service to my buyers.
I’m making important decisions about selling resources.
Another way I’m creating the life I love is making important decisions. In building my online business, I have to make tons of decisions – from logo and blog designs to the types of resources I want to provide for teachers. These decisions knocked me reeling sometimes. However, Kayse and the other teachers in our TYR Facebook group guided me through my indecisions and encouraged me by example.
Additionally, my husband and I are making better financial decisions because of what I’ve learned about running a successful business. We’ve paid off all our credit card debt and remortgaged our home to a 15 year mortgage. Because of my teaching resource business, I am able to help my husband build up our savings, so we never have to go into debt again. We are no longer fighting over money, and I think this business may have saved our marriage.
I’ve become an example to our son.
In becoming a business owner, my sixteen-year-old son is watching his mom craft a new life for all of us. He is seeing the possibilities for himself, and even asked if he could work for me this summer. We’ve had long conversations late into the night in my home office about what I’m doing and what I’m learning. This business has allowed me to connect with my son on a whole other level.
What more could a mom hope for?
I have discovered new teacher friends.
Transform your Resources also gave me the opportunity to meet so many wonderful teachers, who are also building their teacher resource businesses. It is an honor and a privilege to work with so many dedicated women and men. Through our Facebook group, we help each other problem-solve and work through the difficulties of being a business owner while also working as a teacher.
At first, I struggled with making editable resources, one of the many lessons taught in the course. However, with the TYR Facebook community’s help, I created Editable Vocabulary Activities for Middle School and this blog post: 5 Word Games to Play with Middle Schoolers. I never would have spent the time and energy on either of these a few months ago because I wouldn’t have understood how powerful a blog can be to building an online business.
Also, for the first time ever, I am flying to the TeachersPayTeachers business conference in Austin, Texas this summer. I look forward to meeting many of these wonderful teachers I’ve gotten to know online. I finally get to meet Kayse Morris in person!
Another conference I plan to attend is the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) in Baltimore this November, and I can’t wait to meet new friends there as well.
I have renewed confidence in my teaching expertise.
Through Transform Your Resources, I have a much better understanding of what teaching resources middle school ELA teachers need and want. It’s much easier to create resources when you know what teachers are searching for and how they are searching for them.
You know that dry textbook I talked about earlier? Well, I’ve finally finished making teaching resources for every selection in that textbook. As I’m going through my coursework for Transform Your Resources, I wondered what products to work on next.
I really wanted to focus on my two passions – helping teachers and writing.
It only makes sense for me to create teaching resources that’s at the core of my being. I’m a writer. Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed of being a famous writer someday. My English degree from the University of South Florida is in Creative Writing. I’ve written and self-published several books for teens, and I’m currently teaching a creative writing course for my school because my principals all asked me to – not once, but over and over again.
Yet, I hesitated to share this expertise because I thought the market was oversaturated.
But one thing Kayse teaches us is that “no one else teaches it the way that you do.” If teachers are searching for these resources, it means they need them. Kayse also teaches how to help your customers get through all the Internet noise to find your teaching resources.
Writing has always been the cornerstone content of my classroom. It needs to be the cornerstone of my business as well.
I created my own business selling teacher resources.
Learning how to run a business from scratch is a daunting task. I took business courses in college with the idea that someday they might come in handy. Yet, I never learned how to apply anything that I learned there, and that was over twenty-five years ago before Google was invented.
At first, learning how to sell my teacher resources online overwhelmed me. However, with Transform Your Resources you can replay the videos over and over again and pause to take notes.
This course definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone, but I needed this push to grow as a person and find my creative voice again.
In the past five months, I’ve listened to many business books on Audible and several business podcasts in iTunes. My favorite, of course, is The Go-Getters Podcast, which is hosted by my favorite business coach, Kayse Morris.
Marketing always eluded me, but now I feel much more confident about how I can use my creativity to sell my teaching resources online without feeling like I’m a snake oil salesman.
My business selling teaching resources online is growing.
If I hadn’t taken the leap and taken the course Transform Your Resources, I’d still be making worksheets for a dry, old textbook. I would still have a side hustle that I just somewhat cared about. I’d still counting down the years until retirement. However, now I’ve found self-fulfillment.
After selling almost $10,000 worth of teaching resources online in the past ten months, I am well on my way to continuing this growth with other product lines and developing my blog. I’m also developing courses for teachers and students to teach creative writing. I have ideas for an eBook that goes along with the course, too.
As you can see, I am creating a life that I truly love. Kayse always says, “The best is yet to come.”
Do you want to create a life that you love? Join us on this wonderful journey of selling teaching resources online and make an impact on thousands of students across the country and even the world.
