2019 February « Used Books in Class

At first glance, Teachers Pay Teachers, a monetized lesson plan site, appears to be a win-win offering. There are lesson plans and educational materials marketed by vendors (teachers) who make a small profit on the sale.

The first win is for the teachers selling the plans. Many teachers could use extra income from selling their lesson plans on monetized sites. Perhaps that extra income may even be put back into the classroom in the form of resources for students.

The other win might be in the time “saved.” With a few clicks, a hit on the Paypal or credit card, there can be a complete set of prepared materials delivered to a teacher’s inbox.

From this perspective, a monetized lesson plan site could be compared to a fast food restaurant, a solution for teachers who did not have the time to prepare lessons. And just as there are different kinds of fast food restaurants, there are menus of grade level prepared lessons in multiple content areas that can be fed to students at minimal cost.

These purchases offer immediate gratification. A solution with little to no effort. No mess to clean up. Problem solved. ..(and fries are delicious!)

But too much fast food is bad for you. That is a fact.
Fast foods are high in calories, fat, salt, and sugar. Fast food is linked to health risks (Type 2 diabetes, heart disease). Fast food is associated with weight gain and obesity.

Curricula Weight Gain

A similar weight gain is happening in classrooms.

If a teacher feels there is not enough time to prepare lessons or materials, the option of a complete take-out lesson can be appealing…and that’s how these materials are marketed:

“…requires NO PREP!”
“A lot of time and effort went into this product!”
“Exhausted by prep?”
“Tired of spending nights and weekends reinventing the curriculum wheel?”

Creating good lessons takes time, and the promise of reduced planning time is enticing. Emergencies happen. Substitute teachers need direction. The computer lab is not available. For realistic reasons, an occasional stop into the lesson take-out market is tempting. Such a purchase can have a mental health side effect in reducing teacher stress.

But for those school districts that already provide grade-level curricula or a scripted program to teachers, those materials purchased on monetized websites have the potential to increase the full helpings in a curriculum by adding more…bell-ringers, task cards, handouts, packets and worksheets, worksheets, worksheets. Each stop in the lesson take-out lane can contribute to a glut of activities.

Ironically, the grade level curriculum is not the only thing getting fat from these extra helpings. Adding materials increases a teacher’s workload: finding, downloading, copying, preparing, and distributing. That pile of handouts will result in a pile of student work to correct and grade. Even when teachers use these activities as a timesaver, they might require more time to correct.

Then there are the other questions: Should any purchased material carry the same weight in assessment as the materials that a school district provides in a curriculum? Are these materials providing valuable data on student performance that can inform instruction? Are materials differentiated for student ability? OR are they busy work, empty calories collecting in unit binders?

Sadly, for under-resourced schools with few materials, the stuff on a monetized website might be the curriculum.

“Why remake the wheel?”

Teachers have always shared materials. But the reality is that the person doing the lesson planning is the person who understands how the lesson will work in the classroom in meeting the needs of the students. One purchased lesson plan may not fit all student needs.

In addition, there is also no oversight or quality control of the materials online. While a lesson plan shared with the teacher next door may carry credibility, the user reviews on a website from buyers can be suspect. There is no quality control or regulation on the seller’s platform.

Plagiarism and Knock-offs

Regulation might stop the level of plagiarism on monetized websites that border on copyright infringement. For example, the TPT platform claims:

“Teachers Pay Teachers is an online marketplace where teachers buy and sell original educational materials.”

Some of what is for sale, however, is not original.

For example, there are links to teachers offering materials that are “based” on the materials in the reading or writing kits from Heinemann’s Units of Study. These kits were developed by Lucy Calkins and other educators. Heinemann’s grade level workbooks and unit sessions (not lessons) explain the purpose of reading and writing workshops in narrative form. Unit guides in each kit detail the assessments, rubrics, and learning progressions. Teachers who read the materials and use the resources provided in the kit should have little need for additional worksheets, slides, or packets.

But there are vendors who offer reduced versions of this material. According to one vendor, “because reading through the narrative from Lucy Calkins in each session can be time-consuming” or from another vendor “you know it can be difficult to grasp everything to teach from the manual.” Given the popularity of academic shortcuts such as Sparknotes, Cliffnotes, or Schmoop, perhaps this kind of offering was inevitable. Nevermind that reading the narrative from the books in the Heinemann kits are what best prepares the teacher to implement the sessions, even if it is hard to grasp.

Then there is the language used to market for these products. One such promotional tag line: “Will have you teaching the Lucy Calkins Curriculum with sniper precision and silky smoothness.” Sniper precision? Silky smoothness? One wonders if vendors understand that the materials are used to improve reading and writing skills, not for something more ominous.

Finally, there are expanded versions of the Units of Study with supplemental materials. Some vendors promote “entire years worth of powerpoint slides” and “extra grammar lessons for writing workshop” neither of which were included by the original designers, probably for a reason. Expansion kits offer extra vocabulary cards, journal prompts, interactive notebooks, and, yes, more worksheets.

The sheer number of these Units of Study knock-offs (2,677 results under a “Lucy Calkin” search on TPT) represent thousands of links to unvetted materials. As a result, school districts that have approved and adopted the Lucy Calkins Units of Study might now have a modified “lite version” or the “fattened version” of the original kits taught in their classrooms.

Heinemann takes notice

Most recently (12/10/18), Heinemann has taken notice. Duplicating their published materials is plagiarism, a practice that should be shunned by any academic enterprise. There is a statement on the publisher’s blog:

“Lifting text, illustrations, and/or charts directly from a published author’s work can be considered intellectual property infringement, as can some adaptations….Although the seller simply intends to offer fellow teachers something ready-made to save time, the material is sometimes downloaded and used by teachers who do not have the original material and will therefore lose sight of the related purpose, intention, and research basis.”

“This product may not be distributed or displayed digitally for public view. Failure to comply is a copyright infringement and a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).”

Unfortunately, Heinemann’s Units of Study are not the only copyrighted materials that have been reproduced or repackaged for resale. Searches for other licensed literacy programs on the TPT website yield the following:

Wordly Wise (4,018 results)
Words Their Way ( 172,010 results)
Sadlier Vocabulary (489 results)
Handwriting Without Tears (872 results)
Fundations (2,669 results)
Patterns of Power (2,672 results )

There may be some original material in those numbers, but there are many knock-offs. Some of these copied materials are as expensive as the licensed originals!

The lesson plan marketplaces were created to support a teacher exchange, putting original ideas out for a small fee. There are vendors who are abiding by this exchange. Many sellers offer creative materials that can enhance a station, center, or activity; bulletin boards have never looked better! Some of these items for sale might spark new ideas that can help novice and veteran teachers alike. But there are also pages and pages of mediocre material that can pack on the pounds and clog the arteries of curricula and ultimately block the delivery of the vetted materials.

Like the tempting commercials of sizzling hamburgers, cheesy stuffed burritos, or frosty mugs of bubbling colas that can be had in minutes, the monetized lesson plan site offers the consumer the promise of a quick, easy serving, especially when the time is limited. But a steady diet of fast food calories is not healthy for the body or for the unit binder. Before investing, teachers should decide if these lessons and materials are just packing on the pounds of busy work. Will these timesavers demand additional attention or correcting? Do they serve the needs of the students?

While there are resources on monetized websites that may make lesson planning easier, there is no guarantee that these resources make lessons better. And while fries may be delicious, if they are consumed regularly over time, they are a health risk.

Know your audience!

This is what marketers and educators have in common, especially as they both are focused on Generation Z (Gen Z) students, children born 1997-to the present. The one defining characteristic of Gen Z? These students (K-12) have never known a world without the internet or cell phones (mostly smartphones). For them, Google and Wi-Fi have always existed. They are wired, and their connection to a continuous flow of information means that traditional approaches to teaching information must change.

Educators are in the business of developing skills in speaking, listening, reading, writing, and mathematics to Generation Z students, from pre-school to post high school. Educators are also traditional, often teaching the way they were taught. In targeting the needs of Gen Z students, they need to figure out which instructional strategies will be successful for this audience.

Advertisers target Generation Z students with messages of empowerment to develop brand loyalty on behalf of clients, starting with the youngest consumers. They are continuously testing marketing strategies to see what works with children who are not as brand conscious as the Millenials before them.

As evidence, consider the TV commercials suggesting that children are capable of “making the choice” in the purchase of the family car:

Honda Ad: A young daughter knows exactly what her parents want. After she lists off her requirements, the salesperson suggests to her the Honda CR-V.
Hyundai: A salesman offers the Elantra and Sonata as great options, but dad has to check in with his daughter. She says “we’ll take both” with a smile.

The family car is not the only traditionally adult purchase receiving this attention:

A little girl promotes an Internet subscription service by finishing all of the salesman’s sentences explaining pricing and savings. After he admits she’s good, she moonwalks away stating, “I’m just getting started,”
A father distressed about a dent in his front bumper is comforted by his young daughter who says “Don’t worry, you have ___” and names an insurance company.

And the economic data shows that adults are listening to their Generation Z children. Barclays Bank reports,

“In the US, Gen Z currently have $200 billion in direct buying power but $1 trillion in indirect spending power by influencing household spending.”

Gen Z has a sense of “self”

Four years ago (2015), the children of Gen Z spent between six and nine hours a day absorbing media (survey Common Sense Media). Most of this time was spent on mobile devices so they could access social media or other digital experiences. A series of infographics offered by Vision Critical, a Customer intelligence (CI) firm, explain Gen Z as “the always on” generation who are not passive consumers. They help create and shape content because of their familiarity with technology.

Gen Z students are empowered, connected, empathetic self-starters that want to stand out and make a difference in the world.

The same conclusions were reached in a 2015 study offered in the Information Systems Education Journal (ISEDJ) titled Reaching and Retaining the Next Generation: Adapting to the Expectations of Gen Z in the Classroom. Gen Z has been raised with technology at an everyday level unlike that of any prior generation. They have a strong sense of “self” and are capable of being self-aware, self-learners, self-reliant and entrepreneurial (self-sufficient).

Empowered Students

Those school-aged children who watch orchestrated situations in TV car commercials where their peers negotiate as adults receive a message of empowerment. Children are in charge; children make the choice.

This form of empowerment has an impact on the classroom where past choices have been up to the teacher, particularly at the middle and secondary levels. For example, teachers may reach for novels which have worked with Generation X (students born 1966-1976) and Generation Y (students born 1977-1997). Teachers may justify their choice of a whole-class read by saying, “My students learn so much when we read _____ as a whole class” or “They need to read this kind of complex text to be ready for (state test, college).”

But this is a new generation of students, and what has worked in the past may not work today.

Teachers should review the conclusions of a 2017 report from IBM titled Uniquely Generation Z: What brands should know about today’s youngest consumers. The report notes that “Generation Z, the latest cohort of shoppers, wields enormous economic power and is key to consumer products and retail companies’ success.”

Among IBM’s recommendations to marketing agencies are six that apply to the classroom:

“Let Gen Zers shape their own experiences.

Don’t make them wait.

Foster a safe [online] environment built on trust.

Give Gen Zers control.

Value their opinions and let them help.

Don’t dictate to or imposed on them.”

Teaching Generation Z

In selecting instructional strategies, teachers may want to review the IBM recommendations for the Gen Z audience in their classroom. Students want to shape their own educational experiences. They do not want to wait to use their skills. They want to be trusted. They want control and their opinions valued. And, they do not want to be dictated to…or lectured at.

That means student choice in the materials or books they want to study, choice in the assignments they complete, and choice in peer collaboration.

Strategies that let Gen Z student determine their educational experiences are those that:

provide opportunities for student inquiry;
brainstorm what they want to know about a topic;
use inquiry to teach research and presentation skills;
use feedback quizzes or exit slips or polls to gather student opinions;
allow for project choice;
offer flexible seating;
commit to choice in reading;
allocate time to make connections to topics;
require less teacher talk;
create more hands-on centers, stations, or activities;
include self-grading;
build in self-reflection.

Discovering what works with Gen Z- the empowered self-aware entrepreneurs- will take some adjustment for both students and teachers alike. Figuring out the balance in providing what students want and what students need will take some experimenting…and there will be failures. Moreover, there is also an ominous tone in a 2018 analysis by the Pew Research Center that noted:

“Recent research has shown dramatic shifts in youth behaviors, attitudes and lifestyles – both positive and concerning – for those who came of age in this era.”

Positive? Gen Z students are self-reliant.

Concerning? Gen Z students are stressed. According to the American Psychology Association, 91% of Gen Z students feel stress.

Of course, the same could be said for their teachers.
Teaching Generation Z is going to cause stress.

Used Books in Class

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