Great Teachers Are Storehouses of Information

This article is the last of a four-part series examining Gallup's research on what great teachers do differently. The last two articles explored "caring," a talent that great teachers use to build relationships that lead to learning, and "belief," a talent that motivates great teachers (see Related Items). This week, I will examine one of the talents that great teachers use to structure learning: "input."

Teachers with strong input talent love to collect, archive and use information. They make learning fun through the wealth of ideas, approaches and stimulation that they bring to the classroom. These teachers have a very inquisitive nature that leads to a continuing love of learning and the exploration of many different ideas or specialties. They keep the best of traditional teaching methods, but constantly add new ideas that help students learn. Other teachers, as well as students, learn from teachers with strong input because they are virtual storehouses of information.

Teachers with strong input talent are distinctly different from others in that they always share and give away what they are learning. When they learn something new, they feel a need to share it with someone else or use it to help someone learn.

Teachers with strong input talent:

• Have stimulating classrooms. There is always "stuff" on the walls, bulletin boards, shelves or displays that deals with past, present or future lessons. Science classrooms may be filled with animal photos, taxidermic specimens and as many live animals as the principal and health department will allow. A teacher in a Gallup focus group said, "Can I make you learn anything? ‘No.' But my responsibility is to provide opportunities (for learning)."

• Return to school at the end of summer vacation with truckloads of things gathered in their travels. They are "pack rats," and they want to want to share what they collect with their students. Principals of teachers with strong input talent despair over never being able to provide enough storage space, shelves or file cabinets.

• May have piles or files of materials yet to be stored, boxed or saved. Often they have boxes in attics, garages or storage facilities. Their spouses invariably ask, "Can't we throw this away, now?" The response is predictable: "No, I might need it sometime." For these teachers, everything they collect could be used to teach something.

• Leave seminars and conferences loaded down with materials, catalogues and samples. As a consequence, principals soon learn to send teachers with strong input to these events as often as possible, because they love the excitement of seeing all of the new ideas and bringing them back to share with the other teachers.

• Collect quotations, magazine articles and journal articles that they find interesting and then share them with others. If you have ever put a yellow sticky note on an article and sent it to someone else, you may have strong input talent.

• Are rarely without a resource to help students learn. They use historical artifacts in social studies, share books from the classroom library in English class, and provide multiple specimens in science class. All of these things stimulate learning by creating excitement, interest and curiosity in students. Another teacher in a focus group said her goal was to "make them (students) feel" the subject matter.

The input talent, like belief and caring, is not learned in classrooms. Great teachers have deep-seated motivations to teach. They create relationships because they know that students work harder when such relationships exist. They intentionally structure learning rather than assuming it will happen.

The great teachers in our lives are special. Write, call or visit a teacher who made a difference for you. Let them know how they touched your life. They need the input.