It's important to know how to lead and manage a classroom with flexibility. Students of all ages are quite capable of learning these routines and contributing to their success once the teacher is comfortable guiding students in that direction.

[Students] are exposed to many things the majority of their teachers didn't encounter until much later in their growing up years.

Differentiation is classroom practice that looks eyeball to eyeball with the reality that kids differ, and the most effective teachers do whatever it takes to hook the whole range of kids on learning.

I have find that today's students are often more tolerant of human variance than students in earlier generations might have been. On the other hand, some of our students need much more interaction with a wide variety of peers so they level of understanding deepens and so they are prepared to live in a world that is only going to get smaller.

Important element is deeply understanding our curriculum. Most teachers know what they're going to cover this week or this term. Few of us can specify precisely what students should know, understand, and be able to do as a result of any particular learning experience or set of learning experiences. Without that specificity, alignment between content, assessment, and instruction is weak.

We have students at the university say on a regular basis, "You're asking us to think and no one has ever done that in school."

We need teacher educators who are hungry to learn about and implement contemporary approaches to teaching and learning in their own classrooms and who are reflective about their work with their students.