My Love/Hate Relationship with Teachers Pay Teachers

 

Mention Teachers Pay Teachers, the online marketplace where teachers sell each other resources that are supposedly original creations, and you will get a reaction of excitement to disgust, depending on who you are talking to. Administrators are known to discourage its use while some teachers swear that purchasing resources from the site is a necessary evil. I suppose I fall somewhere in the middle and I will explain why:

• Some materials are cute, but not connected to any standards. Some creators provide standards along with their products, but I have often found them vague and not accurate.
• Some materials are copied from other resources. Retyping a workbook page and adding cute graphics does not make the content original. If the content looks like it was lifted, I will look for the original creator and purchase it from them.
•  Some materials are not research-based. If a creator claims that a resource can be used for intervention, it should be research-based. 

Those are my concerns, but here is why I can't seem to stay away completely from the site:

• Fonts and graphics. The stuff is cuter than I am willing to spend my time looking for or creating on my own. I cannot draw in the slightest, so the original graphics just amaze me sometimes.
• Everything is in one place. We are doing themes each week for summer school and I selected a read aloud for each week based upon the theme. Teachers Pay Teachers was where I found companions to each book, with vocabulary activities, plot and character analysis discussion questions, and ideas for celebrations. Each novel study was reasonably priced. I also found literacy and math centers for the younger students with games that matched my theme, like shark-themed word or math games for shark week. 
• I am purchasing from other teachers. We teachers work really hard, and it seems like everyone else profits from it: the test-making companies, the textbook companies, the lobbyists, the politicians, etc. If I can give some money back to a hard-working teacher instead of them, I am all for it.

What do you think? Do you use Teachers Pay Teachers or do you stick with the provided curriculum? Did I miss any pros or cons?