We’re celebrating TpT’s 10th Anniversary throughout the month of April, and we’d love for you to join in on the celebrations! We’ve created a special page full of teacher inspiration stories — share yours, read through others, and remember the power of being a teacher. The future is bright and it’s all because of teachers like you. #TpTInspiredTeaching
TpT is 10 years old today! Isn’t that something? I remember the launch as if it were yesterday. We turned on the site in a fit of nerves and excitement. I scrambled to test every link and ensure signups were working and the shopping cart functioned. Not really understanding that websites took time to take off (if ever), I thought traffic would immediately start flooding the site and we’d be off to the races. Alas, though my Craigslist posts seeking sellers were working, there weren’t any sales that first day, or the day after that, or the week after that. Well, being a “glass half full” kind of guy, at least I was able to get some sleep. 
The first sale — the first bit of proof that this notion that teachers valued each other’s ideas enough to exchange a couple bucks for them — took place three weeks after launch on April 21, 2006 for a lesson named Comparing and Rounding by Melissa Eaton. What a moment that was. I believed deeply that this idea needed to exist, and here it was, alive, working, helping. And oh my, how TpT has become so much more than an ecommerce exchange over these past 10 years. 
For Sellers, TpT is empowerment. (Arguably the greatest thing in the world.) It’s affirmation. It reignites one’s passion for teaching. It’s even become a lifestyle. It’s the tapping of a fountain of creativity and a wealth of expertise that literally millions of other teachers and tens of millions of other students benefit from in very real ways in very real classrooms around the world every day. It’s collaboration and inspiration with rewards. Are you serious? Does it get any better than that? TpT is for professionals. 
For teachers who download and purchase, TpT is a lifesaver. It’s expertise at your fingertips, hours of saved time, years chopped off getting to proficiency in you-name-it pedagogical task. It’s the gratification of rewarding another teacher for making you a better teacher. It’s a thank you from parents appreciating that you want to be the very best teacher for their child today, not tomorrow. TpT is for professionals. Thank you so so much. Thank you for being teachers. Thank you for being a TpT teacher, a true professional, one of the greatest people on Earth who we are so grateful to be supporting and empowering today and every day over these past 10 years. Here’s to the next decade — beer glass clink (I was never one for champagne) — where we plan to empower you in new and meaningful ways. I mean, at 10, we’re about as old as a 5th grader, on the cusp of puberty and possibility. Stay with us. Make us better. We’ll make you proud. Happy Birthday, Teachers Pay Teachers! Love, Paul Edelman 
