Teaching Motivators & Drainers

Teaching Strength: Creativity

Definition: Youre constantly thinking of new and interesting ways to
conceptualize ideas and planning new projects.
Use It: Creative thinking can be taught. Model creative thinking, such as
synthesizing multiple sources into a new idea, for your students. Then,
challenge your students to be content creators by giving them a project to
work on that requires them to review and integrate lots of information to
create something new such as a book or presentation. Make sure, however,
theres no right answer.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________

Teaching Strength: Curiosity

Definition: Youre always interested in exploring and discovering new
things. You want to experience things just to have done them.
Use It: Curiosity is all about asking questions. See how many questions your
students can come up with around one broad topic or essential question:
What is fire? How do dolphins communicate? How can we solve global
warming? Introduce famous mysteries from history/literature and see
what questions emerge? Post the questions and comments on sticky notes
or notecards and watch students curiosity spread across the room.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________

Teaching Strength: Open-Mindedness

Definition: You enjoy hearing about and thinking about new ideas.
Use It: Try a Consider-It Cube. Using a cube cut-out, write an idea or
proposition in the center (i.e., we should elect a class president) and have
students consider five different ways to think about that idea, from different
perspectives or toward different goals. Students can use the completed
cubes to discuss and debate different ideas.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________

Teaching Strength: Perspective

Definition: Youre able to make sense of complex situations and provide
advice for others.
Use It: Videotape yourself explaining those tough-to-explain concepts and
keep a bank online of your explanations so students (and maybe other
teachers) can access them for homework, extra practice or when that
concept comes up again.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________

Teaching Strength: Courage

Definition: You embrace challenges and act even when no one has your
back.
Use It: Spend some time each week reading a newspaper clip or watching a
video clip of a recent courageous act. Then, discuss what it takes to be
courageous, and, as you review more courageous acts, identify similarities
and differences among people who act courageously.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________

Teaching Strength: Persistence

Definition: You always finish what you start regardless of what road-blocks
arise.
Use It: Post a math challenge problem every week that it will take students a
significant amount of time to solve. Then, model persistence by showing
them how you come back to the problem and encourage them to do the
same until you, or a student, solves it.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________
Teaching Strength: Kindness
Definition: You enjoy doing work and favors for other people.
Use It: Create a structure for students to communicate what they need from
and what they can give to one another. For example, if one student needs
help studying for a math test, provide a way for students to communicate
that (a favor chart, morning meeting announcements or request box) and
time for them to demonstrate those acts of kindness.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________

Teaching Strength: Optimism

Definition: You always look on the bright side and are quick to turn a bad
situation right side up.
Use It: Optimism creates resilience and persistence in students. Create a
warm and inviting space in your classroom for students to post their goals,
hopes and stories about things they have accomplished during the year.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________

Teaching Strength: Results Oriented

Definition: Youre focused on the end goal for each lesson, unit plan and
school year.
Use It: Create charts and graphs that show and track the classs as well as
each students progress toward goals in reading and math. Even better, have
your students track their own progress and results.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________

Teaching Strength: Discipline

Definition: You thrive on structure and routine and create enough
organization in your classroom to manage a small country.
Use It: You know how you want everything done, but help students take
over the running of your classroom with a binder of laminated How To
instruction sheets with directions for everything from arrival to classroom
jobs to rules for small group discussion.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________

Teaching Strength: Independence

Definition: You are not easily swayed by others and tend to prefer working
on your own.
Use It: To strengthen students independence, create a chart with a
continuum from needed a lot of help to did it all by myself that students
can use to show how independent they were during a specific task. Have
students track their independence during certain activities each day, for
example, independent reading or math stations.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________

Teaching Strength: Collaboration

Definition: You work best as a member of a group.
Use It: Try collaboration stations. Just as you love collaboration best when
the task isnt easy, create projects that are genuinely challenging for your
students to complete because this forces them to rely on each other.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________

Teaching Strength: Fairness

Definition: You put great importance on treating everyone the same.
Use It: Set up a mock trial using a text, such as the Parvana series by
Deborah Ellis, or a current event, that teaches students to argue, defend and
evaluate fairness in context.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________

Teaching Strength: Self-Control

Definition: You are able to manage and regulate what you feel and do.
Use It: Its important for students to see self-control in action, so explain
when youre flexing your self-control muscle. Also, use your self-control to
extend wait time for students during discussion, and step back from
student-led discussions.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________

Teaching Strength: Humor

Definition: You love to laugh and make other people laugh.
Use It:Humor helps solidify student learning. Post a cartoon or joke as the
morning Do Now assignment or exit slip to inject some levity into your
lesson and increase the chance that students will retain it.

Our Teachers with this strength: _________________________________________________

Our Teachers who feel drained by this: __________________________________________