Why Leaving a Review for Teacher-Created Educational Resources Matters
The copy machine jammed for the third time last Tuesday, and I leaned against the counter sipping cold coffee that had brewed at 6:15 that morning. I opened my Teachers Pay Teachers seller dashboard on my phone, and stared at the number: 147 downloads of my low-distraction CVC blending worksheets, 0 reviews. I locked my phone and went to pry the crumpled paper out of the machine, already running late to pick my kids up from specials.
During my 22-minute prep period that afternoon, Sarah, the first grade teacher next door, brought over a pack of cheddar Goldfish and sat on the edge of my desk. I mentioned the 0 reviews, half joking that I’d wasted three evenings making something no one liked. She laughed and said she almost never leaves reviews. She downloads what she needs, uses it that week, and forgets. I get it. Our days are full enough without adding one more tiny task to the to-do list. But after I told her why I made the worksheets in the first place, she paused and said she hadn’t really thought about it that way.
I made the set back in September for Mia, one of my second grade students with ADHD who struggled to stay focused on any worksheet I pulled out of the reading curriculum. Every pre-made set I found had neon headers, extra clip art in the margins, 15 words crammed onto a single page. Mia would finish two words, then start drawing dinosaurs in the blank space, and that would be the end of our small group reading practice for the day. I sat down after my own kids went to bed three nights in a row, drinking peppermint tea and adjusting line spacing, to make something that worked for her. I ended up with 10 pages, one word per line, plain white backgrounds, only a tiny simple picture next to each word to cue meaning. It worked. Two weeks ago, Mia finished an entire page of eight words without getting distracted, and she raised her hand to show me before she started drawing. It was the small win we’d both been waiting for.
I cleaned up the file, added a cover page, and put it up for $2 because I figured other teachers must have kids like Mia, who get overwhelmed by all the extra stuff that comes with most educational resources. I didn’t make it to get rich; I make less than $60 a month total from all my resources, and that just goes back to buying copy paper and extra snacks for my classroom. But I do want other teachers to be able to find it if they need it, and that’s where reviews come in.
I realized a while back that I was guilty of the same thing Sarah was— I’d download a resource, use it, and never think to leave a review. Then last year I wasted $3 on a morning check-in resource that was totally wrong for my class. All the reviews were generic, just “great resource!” five stars. When I downloaded it, all the emotion labels were words like “disgruntled” and “melancholic” that my seven-year-olds had never heard of. If one person had left a one-sentence review saying “vocabulary too advanced for lower elementary, good for upper middle school” I would have saved my money and 15 minutes of editing the file to fix it.
That’s the first thing reviews do that most people don’t think about: they help other teachers and parents pick the right resource for their specific needs. You don’t need to write a three-paragraph essay, either. Even one or two specific sentences are more helpful than no review at all. If you used it with a small RTI group, say that. If your kid who hates worksheets loved it for at-home practice, say that. If it was too easy for your third grader but perfect for your first grader, say that. Even a quick “this worked great for my student who gets distracted by extra clutter” tells other people exactly what they need to know before they spend their own money and time.
Reviews also help small teacher-created resources show up in search. Big educational companies have huge marketing budgets to get their resources to the top of the page, but a teacher like me who makes resources after bedtime relies on reviews to push the resource up in search results. Without any reviews, my CVC set doesn’t show up until page five of search results, which most people never scroll through. That means the teacher who’s up at 9pm looking for a low-distraction worksheet for their own student like Mia will never find it.
After our chat in prep period, Sarah downloaded my set that night after she graded her papers, and left a one-sentence review: “Perfect for my RTI small group, no extra distractions to pull my kids’ focus.” I got a notification the next morning, and that small note made my whole day. A week later, another teacher left a quick review saying it worked great for her student with ADHD, and added that it would be nice to have a few pages with simple two-word phrases. I added three new pages last night, after my kids went to bed, and updated the file. That’s the other thing: feedback from reviews helps creators adjust resources to fit what teachers actually need.
I still have 144 downloads without reviews, and I don’t expect everyone to leave one. I know how chaotic our days are, and how easy it is to forget that one extra step. I still forget to leave reviews for most resources I download myself. But now when I do use something that works for my class, I take 30 seconds to leave one specific line. It’s a tiny favor that helps everyone: the teacher looking for the right resource, the creator who just wants to help other kids, and the students who end up with materials that actually work for them. It’s not going to change anyone’s life, but it’s the kind of small, easy thing that makes all our jobs a little easier.
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