A study was conducted to determine where a sample of English language arts teachers, identified as educational leaders, get their ideas. Twenty-five English language arts teachers agreed to participate in the study which took the form of a 10-item survey. Five items dealt with trivial knowledge about language conventions and five items required teachers to describe continually successful teaching practices. Results indicated that these 25 teachers tended to trace their trivial knowledge of language conventions to teachers they had once had and that they continued to use this knowledge in teaching their own classes. They did not rely on their own teachers for the development of what they perceived to be continually successful teaching ideas. Rather, these teachers tended to claim original creation. A sub-sample of 10 teachers was drawn from the original 25 (the five most and five least experienced) to determine whether these subgroups drew their teaching ideas from the same sources, whether the nature of the teaching ideas between the two groups was different, and whether their ideas labeled as "original creation" were perceived as being original by their peers. Results indicated that the two groups perceived that sources for teaching activities were distributed in a similar way and that both groups cited "original creation" as the most frequently used sources of ideas. To test whether claims of originality were warranted, a sample of 10 purportedly original ideas was submitted to a panel of 23 teachers under the guise of a "teaching idea contest," where prizes were to be awarded for originality. Results indicated that in none of the 10 cases did a majority of the judges determine that the idea was original. (Seven tables of data are included and nine references are attached.) (MG)