10 Things We Have Learned

Last month we began two new teaching adventures.  We began our very own blog AND began selling our own teaching ideas and units on Teachers Pay Teachers and Teachers Notebook.  Its amazing how many things we have learned in such a short amount of time.  In case you are beginning your very own blog or Teachers Pay Teachers adventure, here is a list a few of the things that we wished we had known before we started:

1.  Always use Power Point!  Power Point works so much more smoothly when making TPT units than Word or Pages.

2.  People will not automatically find and follow your blog.  Its all about shameless self promotion any where you can!

3.  On TPT, your preview does not automatically show up as the thumbnails. You have to add each page as a separate picture.

4.  Commercial use clip art can be expensive and addicting to buy!  Be sure that you have an actual use for it before you buy it... Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers are great resources for clip art and borders.

5. Keep a notebook or file of all of you "amazing" ideas because you will start out with a bunch but it will take you forever to get to them all.  If you are anything like us you will forget them before you get to them!

6.  Don't forget to save your created units as a Power Point AND a PDF so that you can go back and fix the inevitable typos.

7.  Computer code is scary...find someone who does this for a living and have them create your blog template and add the buttons that you want.  We used Dreamlike Magic and they were SO awesome!

8.  When you link to other people's blogs ask them to link to yours as well...here we go once again with the shameless self promotion!

9.  Offer free things on your blog that you would want if you were your own follower.  Everyone loves free things but only if they are useful!

AND

10.  Don't take yourself too seriously and have fun!  You will make mistakes, you won't be perfect, and that's OK!  This is an adventure after all and what fun would an adventure be with no excitement!