ABSTRACT
You walk into a classroom to find students actively engaged in diverse activities, clearly attending to the tasks at hand. The teacher is sitting and talking with a student. After a few minutes, the teacher moves to sit with a group of students. Again, after a few minutes, the teacher moves to sit with another student. At some point, you ask the teacher to tell you about a particular student. With ease, the teacher tells you what the student is working on, how he is progressing in his learning goals, where his challenges are, and what she plans to do to address them. How is the teacher able to do this with so much activity in the classroom? The answer lies in masterful facilitation of the learning environment, the subject of this chapter. I frequently use the following GPS metaphor to shed light on the teacher’s role as facilitator of learning.
