Abstract
The audience will explore a multi-age classroom that focuses on the importance of setting up the environment, multiple intelligences, differentiated instruction, and authentic assessment in order to create a child-centered learning community that cultivates lifelong learners with strong leadership skills and
Islamic character.

Best Practices in Child-Centered Learning
By Syeda Maimoona Ali & Valencia Ashley
Introduction
“Dude, what would happen if you put a group of third, fourth, and fifth grade students together in one classroom, gave them a weekly work plan, told them to get to work, and then sat down in a comfortable chair to sip your morning coffee and grade a few papers?” This is the big question that a group of frustrated educators had when they were envisioning building the perfect school. Fed up with doing the same old thing and getting the same old results, and armed with knowledge of the best pedagogy in the field of education, these teachers and administrators met weekly over many months to lay the foundation of Good Tree Academy, a private Islamic school located in Richardson, Texas.
As reverted American Muslim educators, we have experienced public schools as students and private Islamic schools as teachers. Upon close reflection, our experiences in the classrooms of both of these realms of educational institutions have been mundanely similar. Students enter the classroom and sit down and wait until the teacher tells them what to do. If the teacher takes too long to tell them what to do, the students often make their own agenda, which can include everything from gossiping, to practical jokes, to bullying their classmates, to throwing spit wads at the teacher while her back is turned.
Then, the teacher has to waste precious time getting the class to realize that she is ready to present her lesson and that their attention is appreciated. At this point, students (innocently) realize that they forgot their notebook, pencil, or textbook and waste more precious minutes running here or there to retrieve these missed items. Now, fifteen minutes into the class, everyone is sitting quietly at their desk, with all necessary supplies, and ready for the “sage on stage” to perform. Thereafter, the teacher commences to spew all of the knowledge she has on a particular subject, expecting the students to soak up all of her wisdom, and not knowing that five minutes into her spiel, she had lost half of the class.
A few students will be thumbing through the textbook looking for gross pictures to share with their classmates. A few more will be passing notes back and forth to each other. Others will be doodling in their notebooks or daydreaming about what they will be doing after school. Some might be hunkered down on their desk with their textbooks upright and hiding their faces so the teacher doesn’t know they are sleeping. One or two might be secretly studying for the science test they will have later in the day.
Then don’t forget the voracious readers who have hidden the latest Harry Potter behind their textbooks

and are in a different world altogether. What about the ones wondering the hallways with an overactive bladder? This list could go on and on. The bottom line is the students are not engaged in the lesson and the teacher is the only one who is learning.
After the lesson has finished, the students are all given the same assignment to complete quietly and independently at their desks. A few of the advanced students finish quickly because they had already completed most of the assignment while the teacher had been yacking away. Now they have “free time” and are bored so they commence to distracting other students in the class who are still working. Another group of students will look at the questions, feel overwhelmed, and either give up completely or resort to getting the answers from their buddies.
All of them are wondering why the teacher is making them learn this and what it has to do with life in the “real