Non-Coercive Classrooms: Successful Students, Successful Teachers

Non-Coercive Classrooms is aimed at the years from kindergarten to grade twelve. It contains descriptions of best practice if our goal for students is to leave school with skills that enhance their innate intelligence. The author argues that the benefits of teaching skills as opposed to conveying content, provide students not only with personal advantages such as enhanced self-esteem but also as a more useful preparation for life after grade twelve. In a section on teaching resources the author provides example activities on: - how an activity has the potential to enhance multiple intelligences - creating enhanced notebooks or records - concrete language assignments - a generative approach to building content based on topics, attributes, and actions. Perhaps most important is the opportunity for students to learn what it means to be in a non-coercive relationship with other students and with other adults. And to learn the positive nature of non-coercive behavior especially as it effects their own attitude about school and about learning.