How can teachers steal ideas? They can have team meetings or department meetings in which they talk with their colleagues about educational issues and solutions. When meetings focus on powerful learning questions such as “How can we help our students to better focus their writing?” or “What strategies will help improve our students' scientific reasoning?” then the teachers can hear new ideas that are worth stealing.

Educators arrange meetings with other educators. One language arts teacher has a monthly after school “coffee” meeting with several other teachers of her same subject area. These teachers are from various districts in same area, but these teachers come together to share and to steal each other's good ideas. Another group of social studies teachers gather once a month on a Saturday morning to talk over their present unit. Everyone brings a paper copy and a digital copy of the resources they have used in the unit in the past or of resources they might use in the unit this year. They talk over the merits of the materials and classroom activities; they freely take from each other. These short, three-hour meeting provides everyone with new resources and ideas to use in their classroom. A group of science teachers do not have physical visits; they share on a wiki their weekly lesson plan, activities, and materials. They often email each other for clarification or more information on a particular activity.

Teachers can steal ideas when schools post create exemplary teaching practices. In a school, whenever the principal observes a great teaching practice, he asks for a digital copy of it. He labels each copy with the teaching practice, subject area, grade level, and teacher's name and then places the digital copy on the school server. Any teacher can access these materials; the teachers know that these practices are real classroom practices created by their colleagues. They can access these teaching practices 24/7,steal a particular idea, and transform it for use in their classes.

Likewise, many school districts have a professional library which contains great ideas to pilfer. Teachers can look in the professional library for publications of the major subject areas such as the National Council for the Social Studies' Social Education. In addition, teachers can steal many ideas from more generic publications like those of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD)'s Educational Leadership which focuses on teaching and leadership issues. Furthermore, the district library may have subject area textbooks other than the district approved one.

The theft of good teaching ideas can occur online. Many professional sites have great articles and examples. For example, the National Council of Teachers of Math (NCTM) has many excellent ideas for teachers to steal. On their Teacher Tips page, teachers can learn about and then use ideas on using current events and real data, on employing different testing strategies, and on demystifying the Pythagorean identity. Also, teachers can go to sites such as Scribd where others post their material to search for materials; for example, for example, the writing teachers can pilfer some of the ideas from the 1000 Quick writing ideas. Similarly, reputable sites like Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators that includes a very large collection of information for each subject area. Likewise, teachers can use the district's access to online educational databases such as EBSCO's Academic Search Premier to find articles with idea worth taking. A word of warning is when teachers search in a regular web browser, they may find many ideas but not only a few of them may be of a high enough quality to steal.

Teachers should actively steal good ideas. Chaucer takes Weisskopf 's stealing idea to the logical point for education when Chaucer said, “Gladly would I learn (by stealing ideas) and gladly teach.”

Dr. Harry Grover Tuttle focuses on assessing and improving student learning through low- and high-tech tools.

PR: wait...  I: wait...  L: wait...  LD: wait...  I: wait... wait...  C: wait...  SD: wait...

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