"Welcome students, let's have fun today..."
- No clear boundaries set up for students
- No immediate or effective teacher interventions applied
- No structure in classroom
- No lesson plans
- Teacher is more 'friend' than adult
The Hands-On Style (autocratic):
"Open your books to page 32 and complete the 50 exercises. If anyone has a problem with that they can leave now..."
- Trying to 'make' students behave
- A 'do it because I said so' approach
- Causes students to confront, rebel, and subvert our best efforts to maintain order
- Classroom is too structured
- Multiple, unrealistic classroom rules
- Writing a students name on the board and adding check mark after check mark
The Hand-Joined Style (democratic):
"What do we both need to do to help us learn?"
- Students are respectfully treated as important decision-makers who have the right to make choices and participate in the design of their education
- A mixture of Hands-On and Hands-Off
- Effective classrooms are those in which students are involved in the decision-making process
- Start with expectations instead of rules
- A few non-nonnegotiable things, but not everything is that way
