Whew, Leo -- you're only asking for "everything we know about learning and
teaching!!!"
I would suggest that you might take an hour and read any book by John Holt
that you can get your hands on. John Holt was a brilliant (elementary
school) teacher who was also very thoughtful and self-reflective about the
processes of teaching.
I'll mention one example of how he dealt with some chaos in his classroom.
He created a situation where chaos was okay -- letting the children choose
anything in the room (or something they brought from home) that was new to
them and try to learn how to use it. It was to be something they really
wanted to learn to use. He, the teacher, brought a flute (which he had
never tried to play.) He sat down on the floor, by himself, and tried to
figure out how to play the flute. At first he failed miserably, but he
systematically tried various ways of learning -- and talked about what he
was doing out loud. Many children were fascinated and gathered around him
to watch and learn from his learning. You see, they had never had the
experience of seeing how an adult approached learning -- in their
experience adults never learned anything because they already knew it or
knew how to do it! John Holt thought (I think correctly) that it might be
more useful for them to see a model of how to learn rather than a model of
someone who had learned already.
John W. Gunkler
jgunkler@sprintmail.com
--"John Gunkler" <jgunkler@sprintmail.com>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>