What I Learned When I Asked Educators to Review My Homeschool Learning Resource
It’s 8:17 pm on a Tuesday, my third grader’s already asleep with a half-finished Lego set on his nightstand, and I’m staring at my phone screen sipping cold chamomile tea. My kitchen counter’s cluttered with a stack of sub lesson plans I never turned in after my last long-term gig, a pack of fruit snacks sticky from being left out all day, and the PDF of the math word problem resource I spent three months building. I made it originally for my son, who could do every computation on his tests but froze up the second a problem was wrapped in a paragraph. After I shared a photo of it in my local homeschool group, 17 people asked for a copy, so I cleaned it up, formatted it, and now I wanted someone who wasn’t my sister or my homeschool co-op friend to tell me if it was actually any good.
I’d seen so many new resource creators online just ask their creator friends to leave five-star reviews, and I get it – it’s fast, it’s easy, everyone gets a nice review out of it. But I didn’t build this to make a quick $100. I built it because I remembered how frustrated I was when all the existing word problem resources were either too easy or full of contexts my son didn’t care about. I wanted honest feedback from people who worked with different kids every single day, so I pulled up a list of 12 upper elementary public school teachers and special ed educators I followed on Instagram, all of whom posted regularly about their classroom struggles. I DMed each one a short note: I have a 3rd grade word problem resource I’m getting ready to share, would you be willing to spend 15 minutes looking it over and giving me honest feedback in exchange for a $20 Starbucks gift card, no glowing review required.
Most didn’t reply, which I expected – teachers get hundreds of DMs a day, and most unsolicited requests ask for free work that doesn’t respect their time. Three got back to me within 48 hours, and I scheduled quick 20-minute calls with each of them over the next two weeks.
First was Ms. Lopez, a 12-year 3rd grade teacher in Austin who works at a Title I school. She joined the call 2 minutes late, still wiping goldfish crumbs off her shirt, and got straight to the point. She said she liked the progression of difficulty – it started with one-step problems and built slowly, which aligned with her state standards. Then she pointed to the first page of problems. “All of these are about aquarium trips and soccer team snack runs,” she said. “Three quarters of my kids didn’t go on a vacation last year, and barely a third play organized sports. When they don’t get the context, they can’t focus on the math. Can you swap a few of these for things like counting how many lunch tickets you need for the class, or how many cookies you need to bake for your grandma’s birthday, something most kids know?”
Next was Ms. Henderson, a special ed inclusion teacher who works with kids across three grade levels. She pointed out that I’d crammed 12 word problems on each page to save on printing, and used a 10-point sans serif font. “My students with ADHD and dyslexia get overwhelmed when there’s that much on a page,” she said. “If you cut it to six problems per page, bump the font up to 12, and add a little blank space between each one, that’s a game changer for how many kids can actually work through it independently.” I’d never thought about that – my son has no trouble with text density, so it never occurred to me that it would be a problem for anyone else. I felt a little stupid for missing it, but also relieved someone told me before I put it out there.
Third was Mr. Torres, who teaches 2nd and 3rd grade at a homeschool co-op outside of Atlanta. He said the biggest thing missing was a one-page checklist that breaks down which skills each set of problems targets. “Most parents using this aren’t certified teachers,” he said. “They know their kid struggles with word problems, but they don’t know if it’s addition versus subtraction, or multi-step problems that are the issue. Give them a quick checklist they can mark off after the kid finishes, so they know exactly what to practice next.”
After the calls, I sat down to go through all the notes, and I was surprised how easy the changes were to make. I didn’t have to rewrite the whole resource – I just swapped out 8 of the original word problems for more universal contexts, bumped the font size up, cut the number of problems per page in half, and spent 20 minutes putting together that simple checklist. None of these changes took more than a few hours, but they made the resource useful for so many more kids than the original version.
What I’ve found, through this whole process, is that asking educators for honest reviews doesn’t have to be complicated or out of reach for new creators or parents making materials for their own kids. You don’t need to hire an expensive consultant, you just need to respect their time – a $15 to $25 gift card is more than enough for 15 minutes of focused feedback, and most educators are happy to help if you’re not asking for hours of free work. Be specific about what you want, too – don’t ask for a full review of every page, just ask for feedback on two or three key things, like accessibility or skill progression, to keep it quick. And don’t get defensive when someone points out a gap – I’ve been making materials for my own kid for years, but I only see what works for him. Someone who works with 100 different kids a year is going to see things I miss.
I sent the revised version back to the three teachers last week, and two have gotten back to me saying the changes work. I’m still waiting on the third, who’s out with a sick kid this week. I’m planning to send free copies to five more 3rd grade teachers next month to try with their students before I officially list it. I still don’t know if it’s going to work for every kid, or if people are even going to want to buy it. But I know it’s a lot better than it was before I asked for honest reviews from educators who work with kids that aren’t anything like mine. I’m still learning as I go, and that’s fine with me for now.
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