The Great "Freebie" Dilemma

I'm at a crossroads.

First of all, I'm not here to sell anything. I think it's fantastic that so many SLPs have found a great resource in sites such as Teachers Pay Teachers. The truth is, I don't use it. It's not that I don't like it (so many cute activities! so visually appealing!) I just haven't found it to be very applicable to my practice. For a long time, I was in early childhood, all of my therapy was push-in, and I was rarely one-on-one for longer than five minutes. Now, my setting and population are just very different from the typical TPT crowd.

Plus, I love making my own stuff.

When I initially started this blog, I thought, "I'm making all of these materials for my students and my coworkers ask me all the time if they can use them too. Why not share the things I make with everyone and maybe I can make someone else's life a little easier? Maybe I can help more kids." After all, there's nothing efficient about always reinventing the wheel. Unfortunately, it's not always that simple.

I make things that are practical and useful to me in my practice. I do it because I'm a perfectionist and I need things to be a certain way and I do it because it feeds my passion for being artistic. My brain just works that way and I realize that not everyone is so inclined. I do it because I can customize things for each of my students and I do it because they enjoy it. However, I am incredibly overwhelmed by all of the legal issues associated with sharing content, namely images. For me, purchasing clipart is just not practical. I already own Boardmaker, I'm not interested in selling my materials for profit, and eventually the cost and time adds up. My students now are mostly over thirteen, male, and on the autism spectrum. Let's be real: they're not interested in cute clipart, and it's not appropriate.

Do you see my dilemma?

This, coupled with some personal change (head back one post), is the reason that I stepped away from blogging for several months. I have so much respect for all of the SLP bloggers out there doing the TPT thing (I may not purchase, but I read regularly!) and I think I have unique ideas and knowledge to contribute. I want to keep blogging. I'm just not sure at this point whether/how I can share the materials that I make to support those ideas.

I would love to hear your thoughts. How can we help each other to help kids?