Teaching and computer engineering are two drastically different professions. Yet the engineering team at Teachers Pay Teachers makes it their mission to understand the needs of educators as much as they understand their own code.
“We’re constantly thinking about how teachers can help one another identify lessons and activities for the classroom that are most effective,” said engineering manager Faisal Anwar.
Paul Edelman founded Teachers Pay Teachers in 2006 after spending years as an educator in the New York City public schools system. What began as a humble exchange for teachers looking to share lesson plans has since exploded into an education powerhouse, where teachers have now created more than 3 million resources, which 5 million educators have downloaded more than 1 billion times.
Today we ask so much of teachers that I’m happy that we can give them back some time in the day."
Supporting this explosive and exciting growth is the Teachers Pay Teachers engineering team, which comprises roughly 40 percent of the company’s 120 employees. In conversation with Built In NYC, the engineering team is humble — explaining that they are honored to do work in service of the world’s educators.
“Today we ask so much of teachers that I’m happy that we can give them back some time in the day by providing them with the ability to find and download ready to use, thoughtfully created resources in the classroom,” said engineering manager Lucas Chi.
Materials on Teachers Pay Teachers span grade levels from kindergarten to 12th, with adult education and staff training materials also available. No subject is too broad, and Teachers Pay Teachers has categories for core subjects as well as special interests ranging from computer science to fine arts to physical education. Educators can find lesson plans, quizzes, homework sheets, in-class activities and more to enrich their curricula. As one can imagine, supporting such a broad range of ideas requires diligence and forethought.
“We don’t just build technology for the sake of building,” added Anwar. “We make sure that we’re solving user problems. That can mean deploying specific product experiences that are especially needed by users, but it also means building the infrastructure and tooling behind the scenes that helps us react to user needs faster while providing them high-quality and performant experiences in the classroom.”
Educators are the experts here. They know their students best, and they’re the masters of their craft."
Software engineer Julia Sterling explained that, often, the inspiration for new technology comes directly from teachers themselves. “Educators are the experts here,” she said. “They know their students best, and they’re the masters of their craft. So we focus on technologies that support their skills, by showing them a broad range of teacher-created materials, and letting them share their best ideas with teachers around the world.”
Sterling works on a portion of Teachers Pay Teachers known as TpT for Schools, which allows teachers and administrators to collaborate on curriculum creation using resources from the site, as well as request funds for school materials and activities to avoid teachers paying out-of- pocket expenses. Sterling explained that, as the team grows, they aim to foster the same collaborative spirit internally that they imbue into their products.
“We’ve recently had a few new people join the TpT for Schools team,” she said. “And we’re trying to give them the best of both worlds: sharing the knowledge we’ve built up, and letting them make their own decisions (and mistakes), in order to teach us new things as well.”
It’s this type of “always learning” culture that meshes seamlessly with the Teachers Pay Teachers mission. “We’re always asking one another what we’re doing well and what we’re not doing well,” said Anwar. “We’re identifying what we can get better at and actually taking action on those, usually with a bottom-up approach where engineers are encouraged to design and suggest solutions to our processes and culture.”
Our job is to meet teachers where they are with technology they’re already comfortable with.”
The problem-solving mentality of the engineering team comes full circle as they work to create user-friendly products for millions of teachers, always keeping their clientele in mind. And teachers have proven receptive and grateful in response.
“Asking a teacher to learn how to use a new tool or teach her students the ins and outs of a new software package, we’re not really saving them time,” said Chi. “Our job is to meet teachers where they are with technology they’re already comfortable with.”
The result is an engineering culture — and a company — unlike any other.
