Simmons shares tips and lessons learned, from his first year of teaching, for creating a classroom environment that minimizes off-task or "problem" behaviors and for addressing disruptive behavior in ways that keep it from escalating. Among his suggestions: alternate between being a "lion" and a "lamb," carefully…

The minute students first step into any classroom, they begin assessing the environment, the teacher, and one another for clues about what to expect in the upcoming school year. Yet what do they usually encounter the first day? A teacher who's busy assigning seats, reviewing rules, and assessing various skills. However, it is during this time that…

When faced with students who have learning skills, styles, and backgrounds very different from their own, teachers can promote academic rigor by engaging in reality pedagogy. This approach proposes seven strategies, or Cs: Cogenerative dialogues (in which teachers solicit feedback from a dissimilar group of students); coteaching (in which students…

Describes how teachers manage multitask classroom activities by defining teacher and student work cycles, sorting students into attention categories by assessing their work daily, and providing assistance to students according to need. Includes figures illustrating student's and teacher's work cycles and the three levels of classroom decision…

South Africa and Namibia, two countries building young democracies, face the task of transforming their public education systems to support the values articulated in their new constitutions. This article describes a project designed to incorporate these values into schools. A group of 50 Namibian teachers, who were enrolled in the author's…