The New York Times had an interesting article online, Selling Lessons Online Raises Cash and Questions, highlighting how educators are finding ways to sell their lesson plans online and using the cash for personal and professional purposes, such as classroom supplies and supplemental income.

Teachers Pay Teachers, one of the largest such sites, with more than 200,000 registered users, has recorded $600,000 in sales since it was started in 2006 — $450,000 of that in the past year, said its founder, Paul Edelman, a former New York City teacher. The top seller, a high school English teacher in California, has made $36,000 in sales.

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Kelly Gionti, a teacher at the High School for Law, Advocacy and Community Justice in Manhattan, has sold $2,544 worth of unit plans for “The Catcher in the Rye” and “The Great Gatsby,” among others, helping finance trips to Rome and Ireland, as well as class supplies.

Margaret Whisnant, a retired teacher in North Carolina, earns an average of $750 a month from lessons based on her three decades of teaching middle school classics like “The Outsiders,” enough to pay for new kitchen counters and appliances.

“I have wanted to redo my kitchen for 20 years, and I just could not get the funds together,” she said. “Well, now I’m going to have to learn to cook.”

I think it is absolutely fantastic that teachers can sell what they have created, sharing successful materials with other educators. With the advent of services such as Teachers pay Teachers and self-publishing websites like LuLu, teachers are able to share and profit.

Some may criticize and say that teachers should share their work without renumeration -and many do out of the goodness of their hearts. On the other hand, it takes hours to create and refine high quality instructional materials, and I have no problem paying a few dollars for that expertise.