A woman teacher who had been teaching girls for several years was asked to survive the boys' class to which she was just assigned. The following suggestions helped her manage:

• Be tough
• Do not let the boys see that youare nervous or afraid
• Give class rules as part of your instruction
• Do not give a list of rules in the beginning of the year
• That means that there will be some violations of your rules in the beginning
• Prioritize your rules so you know what to teach on the first day
• Be aware that they will continue to test you throughout the year
• Keep moving. Be sure that there are no pauses
• Plan more than you will need for each lesson
  • You will cover more with boys than with girls
  • Don’t run out of material with boys
• Switch back and forth frequently between action, study, activity, study
• the action or activity must be less than 10 minutes, and study must be less than 10 minutes
• Teach something and ask them to do a relevant exercise immediately
• That exercise should involve action or activity, such as a contest
• You may have to teach different things from girls in order to plan an activity
• Part of the activity should not be in their seats
  • However, you will want them to get out of their seats in a controlled way
  • Before they get out of their seats, they must know precisely what they have to do, from beginning to end
  • They must realize that they are getting up for a limited and specified amount of time so that they get busy right away
  • They must know in advance that they must stop and sit down when you stop them
  • They must know your predetermined signal for stopping them
  • They must realize that they will face consequences for not following these rules
  • There must be no extensions in time for laggards
  • If the boys are old enough to understand time, then tell them, “your exercise time will end at XX:XX”
  • Confirm that they know what they are supposed to do. You may want to ask, "So what will you do?"
  • Do not Start the exercise until you are convinced that they know what they are supposed to do
  • Class sequence rule: you teach, you confirm that they understand, they don’t do anything until you give the word; then they get up
• In activities, the boys must feel that the teacher is in full control
• Vary your lessons. Some will have extended periods of sitting.
  • Many of those sitting lessons will be poor
  • You need those sitting lessons for variety
  • Save good activity lessons for times when you will be observed
• You will lose students if you seem unsure: "Uh, uh, let's uh, I think that now we're going to stand up, uh, okay now let's sit down"
• In addition to planning each lesson, you also have to practice and rehearse the lesson, so that it will be smooth and continuous

Boys will often give the teacher a period of grace, during which they will act like little angels. This may be a greater problem than having rowdy children, since the teacher may be off-guard when they do start to act up. When their "natural" behavior is released, the teacher may not realize that she should have been on guard for this eventuality.