Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kathy Dahdal. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Kathy, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
In a traditional sense, building a business often begins with writing out a business plan and using logic to get a sense for the potential success for an idea. But creating your own business doesn’t have to start from this point and it didn’t for me. It started from the practical day-to-day experience of being in my classroom with my students and interacting with my colleagues.
Teaching can be highly collaborative and oftentimes we do our best teaching when we make time to watch others teach. When colleagues observed my own lessons to seek new ideas for themselves, I learned so much through the discussions that have followed. That in itself can be a catalyst for deeper reflection on your own practices. It is from this feedback that I felt encouraged to further share my ideas and the resources I had created.
In return, colleagues have also invited me into their classrooms to see my creations in action. I have always loved seeing other teachers use my resources. This inspired me to create content that teachers around the world could use.
The driving force behind creating my store on Teachers Pay Teachers and other marketplaces was the knowledge that I could have a positive impact. I wanted to extend my reach beyond my own classroom and school, so that other teachers could achieve success with their students.
I could see there was a need for my students around social emotional learning that was practical, realistic, and engaging. My students needed guidance to develop social and emotional skills that they could use in their everyday lives. In today’s world, students need to be taught critical thinking skills, coping strategies as well as other essential life skills. As educators, we want to see them cheering each other on and showing empathy to others. The resources needed have to be culturally relevant to our diverse student population. As teachers we want to equip them with the skills they need to feel confident to make the big life decisions they face.
A lot of the resources I create connect curriculum outcomes in English Language Arts while delving into developing my students’ confidence around social interactions and their own emotions. In order to reach all my students, I need to provide them with a variety of learning opportunities. In Queen’s Educational Resources, my Teachers Pay Teachers store, you’ll find lesson plans, worksheets, activities, posters, teacher guides, and more.
As teachers we get real-time responses from our students. It doesn’t matter the age of a student, they will always give you a sense of whether your lesson or the resource you’re using is appealing to them. As a teacher you develop an understanding for what your students enjoy in a lesson and what they need. Over time, as a creator of learning experiences, it becomes an intuitive feeling that you know you’re hitting a sweet spot between meeting curriculum expectations and what young people need and want from their schooling. Fifteen years as a middle and high school English teacher, and two years as a High School Assistant Principal, have helped me hone this skill.
As teachers we’re trained to reflect on lessons after we’ve taught them. What worked, what didn’t and why? I have taken this skill into my business as an educational content creator and teacher author on Teachers Pay Teachers, Made By Teachers, and Classful. From a business point of view, I reflect on what sells and the feedback I receive. This drives my resource creation going forward.
Through the resources in my stores and in my own classroom, I have done my best to practice what I preach. I teach my students that being resilient to challenges and having a growth mindset is imperative to success. And that is my ethos to building my business and my online store.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?
I have worked in the Bronx as a middle and high school teacher for fifteen years before I transitioned into leadership as a High School Assistant Principal. Sharing my ideas with others has been a passion of mine throughout my career. I love playing a supportive role to other teachers and educators.
Working as an educator can be really creative. Over the years I have honed the skill of taking curriculum and turning it into interesting and impactful lessons that reach my students. I have also found collaborating with my colleagues to be immensely rewarding. I have always enjoyed sharing ideas and resources that I know have led to successful outcomes.
My business was born out of the desire to reach more teachers and students. When I started selling my products on marketplaces like Teachers Pay Teachers, Made By Teachers, and Classful, I wanted to create a store that was inclusive of all students. I strive to create resources that incorporate the rich diversity we see in our classrooms.
A key way I have done this has been through my unique clipart and social emotional themes covered in my resources. Visually, students can relate immediately with these resources and the content is familiar to them. I want to give students the opportunity to learn and practice how to manage their emotions, feel and show empathy for others, have courageous conversations, set boundaries, establish and maintain supportive relationships, make responsible and caring decisions, and set and achieve goals.
My products are designed to empower children and teens to successfully confront, address, and overcome the real issues they face. Our young people need to learn effective ways to develop and maintain positive relationships with others. Similarly, being able to think critically about the world around them is a vital skill they need. My resources relate to a wide range of important life skills including executive functioning, behavior management, wise decision-making, and developing values that help our students to become productive and successful individuals.
I spend copious hours researching, designing and creating my resources and collaborating with talented artists from around the world to create clipart that people will love. I love that I can give other teachers the opportunity to use them, too, through Teachers Pay Teachers, Made by Teachers, Classful, Etsy, and Queen’s Clipart Gallery.
In addition to creating educational content related to English Language Arts and Social Emotional Learning, I also own a clipart gallery – Queen’s Clipart Gallery – on Etsy, Shopify, Teachers Pay Teachers, Made By Teachers, and Classful.
My journey through entrepreneurship has led me to become focused on how inspirational art can be. My goal was to implement, through my work, a highly engaging and beneficial experience for everyone. As I was designing my own educational resources, I came across a lot of clipart that I purchased and used to enhance my educational products. Upon recognizing how beautiful clipart looked on my own commercial use educational resources, I was inspired to start uniting with artists to create unique clipart, and then sell them so that people could use them for their own creative personal and commercial use projects.
This became the origin of Queen’s Clipart Gallery.
In time, I began collaborating with talented artists across the nation. I would solicit my ideas and visions to the creators, and they would then devise art from them. Once an idea was set into motion, I would obtain the necessary copyright protection (complete and full Copyright Ownership of the artwork) and sell them in my own stores. This makes me the only Copyright Owner and authorized seller of ALL clipart/artwork on both Queen’s Educational Resources and Queen’s Clipart Gallery.
I am very proud to have the opportunity to offer an array of art to fellow creators around the globe that not only represents a variety of cultures and art forms, but allows creators to use my art in their creative projects.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
I could see a need in classrooms for resources that were highly relevant that taught essential life skills. I’ve built my brand and reputation by creating a wide range of teaching materials from lesson plans and teacher guides to practical tasks and activity worksheets.
Plus, I am open-minded to people’s ideas, thoughts and perspectives and I consider them when I make my products. I have found if you listen to others, people will usually tell you what they really need.
I also make sure to respond quickly to customer’s questions, concerns and messages. By taking note of the feedback I get, I am constantly able to modify, improve and update my products.
Throughout my teaching career, now as an assistant principal and as a creator of educational resources, I have always found transparency to be vitally important. For example, when I write my product descriptions I want my customers to know exactly what to expect and what they are getting after payment. The same goes when making mistakes. If I make a mistake, I own it, accept responsibility, and fix it. I even offer to make it up to customers somehow. My customers really appreciate that and makes them trust me more. This is something that my students always value and it demonstrates to them that we’re all human and making mistakes is okay.
So many of the skills I have developed working in schools allow me to be successful in my business.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
The most effective strategy for growing my business and my clientele comes down to research. Before creating a product, I need to ensure that it will be relevant and meaningful. I also ask myself if it is necessary and needed.
I use my observation of my students and the information I gain from conversations with them and other educators to determine a need. Based on this information, I decide on topics and skills that I know our youth need to navigate the world successfully.
A simple search of the topic inside Teachers Pay Teachers will allow me to see if there are limited resources. I also find it incredibly valuable to go to other sellers’ stores and dissect the reviews for similar products. This gives me insight as to what a customer appreciates and what didn’t work. I consider and use customers’ feedback and opinions to help create my own resources.
For example, one of my latest resources is on the topic of Peer Pressure. Peer pressure is real and all too common. Teens constantly experience all kinds of peer pressure both in and out of school. It’s often hard to navigate difficult situations and say “no,” especially when there is a strong human need to fit in and feel important. When conducting my research, I was sure of the importance of this topic. I felt it would be a great product to work on. A quick search for Peer Pressure activities in the search bar on TPT showed me that very few sellers had created a resource on this topic, particularly for older students. At this point in my research and with my experience as a teacher, I know that I have found an area of need with limited resources.
For this particular resource, I visited other sellers’ stores to read customers’ reviews on their Peer Pressure products. I was able to learn and gain insight into aspects of the resource that worked and aspects they thought needed improvement. That way when I started working on my product, I can consider and implement their feedback from the get-go.
I repeated the same research and feedback-seeking process for my Sex Education Scenarios. I visited other sellers’ stores to read customers’ reviews on their Sex Education products, so I can learn and gain insight into aspects of the resource that worked and aspects they thought needed improvement. For instance, a customer’s comment on another sellers’ Sex Education product really stood out to me. The buyer mentioned that “the picture on the cover and the language and topics display and assume heterosexual relationships. I think it would strengthen this resource to have images and language that reflects LGTBQ partners and recognizes the sexual and gender diversity of youth. Without this visibility, the resource follows a straight norm in society that can be damaging for queer youth who may feel invisible when their realities around dating, sex, and relationships are excluded or not acknowledged.” This feedback, which was originally intended for another seller, gave me direction when creating my own resource on Sex Education. I wanted to ensure that my product was visibly inclusive and accessible to all students.
Ultimately, the resources I create need to allow for meaningful learning that is highly relatable. In turn, I gain more clients and followers of my store.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Queens-Educational-Resources
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/queens_educational_resources/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/QueensEducationalResources
- Other: Pinterest – https://www.pinterest.com/queenseducationalresources/pins/ Queen’s Clipart Gallery – https://www.queensclipartgallery.com/ Made By Teachers – https://www.madebyteachers.com/seller/queens-educational-resources/ Classful – https://classful.com/shop/queenseducationalresources/
Image Credits
Edward Evans Alina Danilova Maria Samoshina Juny Gutierrez Elena Gridyushko Aymara Mejia Joy and Keith Hearn