Are you collecting Teacher Creature cards?
You most probably are, because we sold 1000 packs in only 5 days!
We are very happy that they have become so popular because we worked hard on them.
It all started when our school had a focus on entrepreneurs in Term 3. We looked at two entrepreneurs: Michael Acton Smith, the creator of Moshi Monsters, and Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokemon. We were inspired by them to make our own characters, and to sell them on trading cards.
But how could we get students interested in characters since they weren’t on a TV show, or website? That’s when we decided it would be good to base the characters on teachers in the school. That way, students might like to collect teachers that remind them of people that they know.
First we explored the design of existing trading cards, so we know what to include on ours.
Then we started the long procress of designing the characters. We gave questionaiires out to all the teachers and staff asking them things like, “what are your skills” and “what things do you dislike?”. Then we used this information to design the characters.
The first character we designed was based on Mr Barrow. We decided he would be a good dinosaur because then we could call him “Barrowsaurus”. Later, Mr Barrow paid us to make him a dragon! So we added some wings and called him “Barrowsaurus Dragon”.
Sometimes we knew what animal to do a teacher because their name already sounded like an animal. Like Mrs Metcalfe. She has “calf” so we made her a cow and called her “Mrs Pet-calf”.
When we had finished our designs we voted on whose one we liked the best. Mr Wesbonk took the winning design and did a final version of it.
Finally we had designed all 37 characters! Meanwhile, we wrote letters to businesses’ asking them to sponsor our cards. We were lucky enough to raise $400!
Adam Doocey (Karyn Doocey’s husband) offered to print the cards for us cheaply. It was very exciting for us when the 4000 cards arrived. We had fun putting 4 into each pack so that we eventually had 1000 packs.
It was an exciting day when we were finally ready to sell. The money poured in fast, and there were lots of kids queuing up. Even teachers were trading our cards in the staffroom!
There were a few disappointed kids when we sold out. But don’t worry, because we ordered some new cards, and we will be selling them very soon!
Room 4
