Three years ago, we set out to share our curriculum with teachers everywhere. Today, we are about to pass the major milestone of one million visitors to Fishtank.
The most rewarding part of the last three years has been connecting with so many teachers like you, and learning about the ways that the Fishtank curriculum has helped you and your students. Throughout these conversations, we’ve been so gratified to hear over and over that Fishtank lesson plans have become a resource that you can depend on.
One thing we hear over and over again is that teachers like you need more of two basic things: time and trust. We agree.
Writing lesson plans can be a full-time job. We know because it’s what we do full-time. Our curriculum directors pour their years of classroom experience into creating, curating, sequencing, piloting, and revising lesson content, so you can dramatically cut down on time spent scouring the internet for lesson inspiration.
With teacher time in mind, we work to make everything on the Fishtank site easy to find and easy to use, whether you’re adopting a full unit or course, or just seeking a supplemental lesson or worksheet. We love seeing what teachers do with this reclaimed time—deeper preparation for bringing the lesson to life in the classroom, more energy for analyzing student work, or simply a better work-life balance.
Even deeper in our DNA is our trust in teachers. We trust teachers like you to know what works best in your classroom, so our curriculum is designed for flexibility. We don’t think that you need a 15-page lesson script to parse through. Instead, our lesson plans are intentionally lean—comprised of a clear objective, the right guiding questions, and the core instructional materials—with plenty of space for your personal style to shine.
A Fishtank lesson asks you to spend time with the material and make some of your own decisions about what your students will need. We provide content-specific professional development resources to give you as much support as you want and need in your preparation.
We created Fishtank for teachers invested in growth—growth for their students, definitely, but also for themselves. We are a thinking teacher’s curriculum, balancing independence with skill- and knowledge-building opportunities for the best possible teaching and learning outcomes.
We think teachers everywhere could use more time and more trust. We believe that teachers and students should have access to comprehensive curriculum that’s carefully scoped and sequenced, equally engaging and demanding, and accessible anywhere there’s an internet connection.
So we remain committed to finding new and innovative ways to support all of the current Fishtank teachers, and sharing our curriculum with the next million teachers in the years to come.