Why are you holding back? You’ve got some great stuff. An amazing lesson, lab, demo, phenomenon, and/or classroom move. All teachers borrow, copy, and edit. We all need help right now adjusting to a dozen ever-shifting demands and conditions,so share what you’ve got! 

What are the reasons teachers don’t share their stuff? Here’s what I hear: 

“I’m worried someone will criticize what I do.”

“I’m worried about copyright infringement, since I use other resources.”

“I worked hard on my lessons, I want to get paid.”

“Why should I share my stuff, if other people don’t share theirs?”

“My stuff is written in a way that makes sense to me, but it would be a lot of work to write it in a way that would make sense to other teachers.”

Let’s take these one at a time.

“I’m worried someone will criticize what I do.”

You might have the science wrong, there might be something in there that offends someone, you might not have your NGSS dialed in perfectly, and people can be judgemental. 

In my experience, people are pretty gentle when they see something wrong. Frankly, I wish I received more feedback. If my science is wrong, if I put something offensive in there by mistake, if there is a way to improve the lesson, I want to know. I know I’m not the best editor of my own stuff. Being open to improvement is always a good mindset to have. The more people who try my stuff, the more feedback I get. And if sometimes people can be wieners, Fork-em!

“I’m worried about copyright infringement, since I use other resources.”

This is legitimate, but not as big an issue as some people think. If you are using stuff in your classroom and not making money off it, you are protected under “fair use.” The worst that can happen is that you MIGHT get asked to remove it. 

But there are some obvious no-nos. Do not copy and use something from a commercial publisher, that’s stealing. If you want to make a suggestion, use a link instead of embedding it. This is a great way to share photos and videos that might be copyrighted. You are sending people to their site, which they will appreciate. And please give credit to people whose ideas you borrow and adapt. 

“I worked hard on my lessons, I want to get paid.”

You did get paid. You get paid for being a teacher. If you are a public school teacher, you were paid to develop your lesson plans by the taxpayers. Your stuff belongs to them, or technically to your district. Most districts look the other way if you want to go on “Teachers Pay Teachers” but really your stuff belongs to the public. 

“My stuff is written in a way that makes sense to me, but it would be a lot of work to write it up in a way that would make sense to other teachers.”

This one is legit. I look at my stuff, think it’s great, read closer and realize it would make sense to no one but me. An example might be a slide in a lesson that’s just a picture of something and I was asking questions and had some student responses I expected. But I didn’t put any of that in there.

But hear me out. The process of making your stuff shareable will improve it for your students. It will make your questions clearer. If you actually put questions and instructions on a slide, then the kids who don’t always hear what you say can look up and know what’s going on. And if we are being honest with ourselves, that’s most of our students. 

“Why should I share my stuff, if other people don’t share theirs?”

Other people aren’t sharing for all the reasons above. Now that they’ve read this article, they will share their stuff. Besides, don’t you want to be the bigger person,--the person who shares the love? Isn’t that why you became a teacher?

So having said all of this, I need to share. Check out this high school unit on the Evolution of Human Skin Color. Here is another 6th grade unit on Hurricanes. I hope you like them and please give me feedback in a nice way)!

How can you share your stuff? Have an amazing lesson, lab, demo, phenomenon, or classroom move? One way is to post it in the CASE Facebook groups for High School, Middle School, Elementary School. 

We also want to start making California Classroom Science a lot more interactive and a place for the California Science Education community to collaborate. Help us by submitting your stuff to this link. We look forward to hearing from you!

All feedback to this article is welcome. 

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