On September 29, Teachers Pay Teachers is celebrating its 20th anniversary! Since I joined TPT during its very first year, the anniversary has had me thinking about just how much has changed over the past two decades and how something I started simply to earn a little extra money became a much bigger part of my life than I ever imagined.
Twenty years ago, I was a full-time high school science teacher with two daughters who were 13 and 10 years old. Like most teachers with a young family, I was always looking for ways to stretch our budget a little further. There were piano lessons, French horn lessons, baritone lessons, and what seemed like a never-ending need for new shoes because my children kept outgrowing the ones they had.
Somewhere along the way, I stumbled across a brand-new website called Teachers Pay Teachers. TPT had been founded in 2006 by former New York City public school teacher Paul Edelman, and I joined during that very first year. I think I may have found the site through Craigslist, although after 20 years I can't say that for sure. I was looking for a way to make a little extra money, and I thought perhaps another science teacher might be interested in some of the activities I was already creating for my own students.
That was really the extent of my plan. There was no business plan and certainly no thought that I would still be doing this 20 years later.
My First Teachers Pay Teachers Resource
The first resource I posted was a Flame Test Chemistry Lab. I had just finished using it with my chemistry students, so it was fresh in my mind. Flame tests certainly weren't something I invented; chemistry teachers had been doing them forever. But I had written my own analysis questions to go along with the lab, and I thought that if I cleaned everything up and added a teacher guide and answer key, maybe another chemistry teacher would find it useful.
My first sale wasn't actually the Flame Test Lab. On November 29, 2006, someone purchased my Conservation of Mass Lab, and I earned $2.55. I was absolutely thrilled! I wish I could tell you that sales took off from there, but they most definitely did not.
My second sale didn't come until January 2, 2007, when someone purchased my Determination of Empirical Formulas Lab. My third sale came on January 25 when someone finally bought that original Flame Test Lab. Then almost six months went by before my fourth sale, a Characteristics of Life Lab, sold on July 26. By the end of 2007, after more than a year on TPT, my grand total in earnings was $28.05.
Looking back at that number makes me smile because every one of those sales was exciting. TPT sent an email when something sold, and you can be sure I noticed those emails!
TPT Looked Very Different in 2006
It is hard to explain just how different Teachers Pay Teachers, and the internet itself, were in 2006. My earliest products were Word documents and PDFs, and some of the first ones didn't contain any graphics at all. PowerPoints were largely text on slides. There weren't thousands of beautiful science graphics readily available online, and we certainly didn't have all the tools teachers now use to create digital resources.
Even the Amy Brown Science logo has changed quite a bit during my 20 years on TPT!
As I began creating more materials, I sometimes drew the science images I needed myself. Cells, cross sections of stems, various invertebrates. You name it, I probably tried to draw it at some point. As online image and graphics sites became available, resources such as Deposit Photos and Adobe's image collections made a huge difference in what we could create.
Eventually, I learned to use Adobe Illustrator, and that was a game changer for me. Science teachers often need very specific diagrams, and I would spend forever searching for an image that was almost, but not quite, what I needed. Illustrator allowed me to create exactly what I wanted. Over the years, those old hand-drawn pictures have been replaced with much better images and diagrams.
When I look at some of my early resources today, the difference is pretty remarkable. The appearance has certainly changed, but the science behind many of those resources has stood the test of time.
Creating for TPT Made Me a Better Teacher
One thing I never expected was that creating resources for TPT would improve my own teaching. Once I knew another teacher might purchase something I created, I began looking at every resource with a more critical eye. Of course the science content had to be rock solid, but I also paid more attention to grammar, directions, organization, and the overall appearance of the document. I wanted another teacher to be able to pick it up, understand exactly what I intended, and use it successfully with students.
For all the years I was still in the classroom, I never sat down and created a resource simply because I thought it might sell on TPT. I created something because I needed it for my own students. I taught with it, saw what worked and what didn't, made changes, and then decided whether it was something another teacher might find useful. That classroom-testing process became an important part of Amy Brown Science, and it is something I have tried very hard to continue even after retirement.
Working on TPT After Everyone Else Went to Bed
Those early years were busy. My daughters were young, I was teaching full time, and TPT had to fit into whatever time was left over. At night, I would get the girls settled, grade the papers I needed for the next day, prepare my lesson plans, and then spend a few more hours working on TPT.
My family thought I was a little crazy, and I'm pretty sure some of them thought I was wasting my time. Considering that I had earned only $28.05 by the end of 2007, I suppose they had some evidence to support their case! But I enjoyed creating the resources, I loved hearing from teachers who were using them, and I kept working.
Remember When We Mailed CDs?
Teachers who joined TPT more recently might have trouble believing some of the things we did in those early years. File-size limits were tiny, and if a large unit couldn't be uploaded, we sometimes put the files on a CD and mailed the CD to the buyer. Physical books and workbooks could be sold and mailed to buyers, too.
Getting paid was quite different as well. Seller earnings were paid only once every three months, and an actual paper check arrived in the mail. There was no TPT phone app giving you that familiar “cha-ching” when you made a sale. We had email, and that was plenty exciting to me at the time.
When TPT Became My Full-Time Job
I taught biology, AP biology, and chemistry for 31 years. Both daughters attended the same high school where I taught. When the youngest graduated, I decided to retire. I was sad that she would no longer be there with me, I was fully invested in our state retirement system, and the timing simply felt right. I could draw my teacher pension and finally find out what I could do with Amy Brown Science if I had more than a few late-night hours to devote to it.
Retirement gave me something I had never had enough of before: time. I spent a great deal of it going back through older products, updating them and improving them. I also created some new resources. Since I no longer had my own students to test everything with, I turned to colleagues who were still teaching and asked them to use new materials with their students. After 31 years of classroom testing my own resources, I didn't want retirement to change that standard.
Then COVID Changed Everything
When schools closed during the COVID pandemic, teachers suddenly needed digital resources, and they needed them immediately. My inbox filled with emails asking whether this resource or that resource was available in Google Slides or Google Forms. In most cases, the answer was no. Until then, I had not created resources for Google Apps and wasn't particularly familiar with them.
Fortunately, I had help. My daughter is a computer engineer, and she was furloughed from her job for a few months while COVID raged. She helped me learn how everything worked and helped me convert many of my resources to Google Slides and Google Forms. I am still so grateful for the time she spent helping me.
For months, I spent hours every day converting resources. I didn't want teachers who had already purchased a resource to have to buy it again just to get the digital version, so I added the new Google versions to the products they already owned at no additional charge. Today, many Amy Brown Science resources include both the printable materials and the Google Apps version in the same download. COVID forced that change much faster than I ever would have made it on my own, but it permanently changed the way I create resources.
More Than Music Lessons and Shoes
What began as a way to bring in a little extra money eventually became something I never could have imagined in 2006. As Amy Brown Science grew, the income did far more for my family than help with the everyday expenses that had first motivated me to give TPT a try. It helped provide opportunities for my daughters that I could never have anticipated when I uploaded those first three resources.
Over the years, the income from Amy Brown Science helped my daughters earn their college degrees and continue their education well beyond that. One daughter became a computer engineer and went on to earn a master's degree in computer science and an MBA. The other went on to medical school and became an OB-GYN. When I think back to those two little girls who were 13 and 10 when I joined TPT, I could never have imagined where all of us would be 20 years later.
That is something I find very humbling. I don't think I'll ever forget that all of this started with a $2.55 sale.
The Part That Has Meant the Most
Of all the milestones over the last 20 years, the one that means the most to me has nothing to do with sales numbers. For three years, I set up an Amy Brown Science booth in the exhibit hall at the National Science Teaching Association convention. I expected to spend my time showing teachers my resources and talking about science education. What I didn't expect was to have teachers recognize me.
Teachers came to the booth and told me they had been using my resources for years. They told me which activities they loved and talked about using them with their students. Some of them hugged me.
I cannot adequately explain how humbling that was. These were teachers I had never met, teaching in classrooms I had never seen, and something I had created had become part of what they did with their students. After all those years of sitting at a computer creating and revising resources, I was suddenly meeting the real people on the other side of those downloads. That meant more to me than anything else that has happened during this journey.
To all of you ... thank you so much for allowing me to be a part of your classroom!
Teachers' Work Has Value
There was some pushback when Teachers Pay Teachers began, and I still hear versions of it today. Some teachers believe that materials created by teachers should simply be shared freely with other teachers. I certainly believe teachers should help one another, and I have shared plenty of free resources over the years, but I have always looked at this particular issue a little differently.
If I spent months writing a novel, no one would expect me to give it away simply because I enjoyed writing it. Creating a quality teaching resource also requires knowledge, creativity, time, testing, editing, revising, and experience. I believe that work has value, and I am grateful that TPT gave classroom teachers a way to share that work with teachers far beyond their own schools.
I'm equally grateful to every teacher who looked at something I created and decided it was worth purchasing and bringing into his or her classroom. That trust has never been something I take lightly.
Twenty Years Later
Teachers Pay Teachers has changed tremendously since 2006, and so has Amy Brown Science. My store has grown from three resources in 2006 to 793 resources today. Word documents with few or no graphics evolved into resources with carefully created scientific illustrations. Text-heavy PowerPoints became much more visual. Printable activities were joined by editable files, Google Slides, and self-grading Google Forms.
What hasn't changed is the reason I create them. I still want teachers to have good science materials that make their jobs a little easier and help them teach their students well. For most of my career, those resources were first created for the students sitting in my own classroom. After retirement, I have continued to rely on classroom teachers to help me make sure new materials work. All new resources are classroom-tested in an actual classroom with actual students.
To every teacher who has purchased one of my resources, downloaded a freebie, read this blog, sent me an email, left a kind review, recommended my work to another teacher, or stopped by that NSTA booth to say hello ... and sometimes give me a hug ... thank you. I truly mean that. I could never have imagined any of this when that first $2.55 sale came through in 2006, and I am very grateful for the teachers who made the next 20 years possible.
Celebrating TPT's 20th Anniversary
Twenty years ago, I was hoping another science teacher might find one of my three little resources useful. Twenty years and 793 resources later, I am still incredibly grateful every time a teacher chooses something I've created for his or her classroom. Thank you for being part of this journey.
