Two Broke Teachers: Educators get crafty to make more money

COLUMBUS COUNTY (WWAY) — We all know teaching is one of the most important jobs in the world, but many teachers can barely make ends meet.

That’s why when a couple of local educators took on second jobs and created a business called “2 Broke Teachers”.

The Tabor City arts and crafts shop is the brainchild of two broke, but creative, teachers.

“We needed to earn some extra money, which most educators in NC all have a second job.” Owner Terry Brown said.

While the average teacher salary in North Carolina is now up to more than $50,000, many still make less than that. For teachers like Terry Brown and Kim Edwards, it’s just not enough.

“It’s just sad that the legislature doesn’t see the value of educators and value us enough to have a pay with salary,” Brown said. “It’s just like if you look at the doctors, lawyers and everybody, it all started with education, with a teacher.”

The ladies knew if they were going to put their kids through school and support their families something had to change.

They began brainstorming ideas about how they could make some extra money doing what they loved.

“One evening we started loving to paint furniture,” Edwards said. “We flipped a piece of furniture. We re-purposed a piece of furniture, and then we’d go into picking, and being vintage pickers, so we would actually ride up and down the road, and ask folks can we pick in their barn. ‘Do they have anything they wanted to sell that were really of value?’ Then we would research it, then it stemmed from there.”

Growing so fast, they are now expanding in their fifth and biggest work space yet.

“We’ve been out meeting a lot of folks, and then our educator folks,” Edwards said. “We can discount them, or help them a lot with things we do, but also we help our community, and folks come from all over now, and just come in here to socialize.”

Brown and Edwards are still teachers at heart, and they sometimes host school-related meetings in their store.

Check out some of their crafts here.