come of age at a time when vast segments of theeconomy and media vie relentlessly for theiraffection, interest, and ultimately, their pocket-books. Although it might be enticing to consideryour students as naïve, emerging minds, it isprobably more apt for beginning teachers tolook out at their students as full-fledged shop-pers accustomed to making choices about towhom and to where they allocate their atten-tion. I invite student teachers to imagine theirstudents holding that quintessential artifact ofour time: the remote control. Would theyblithely click past what is transpiring in yourclassroom as if you were a talking head onCNN? What would get them to lay the clickerdown and devote focus to the academicactivities you have developed?I believe that beginning teachers need to havean orientation to their teaching that recognizeswhat Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Csikszentmihalyi& Larson, 1984) viewed as the key challenge ofinstruction: “The task of education is one of social-izing through seduction. The success of the schooldepends on how effectively it can engage the stu-dents’ minds toward its objectives. Can it gener-ate interest, motivation, and focused atten-tion?” (p. 202). This approach pivots on theprinciple that if our youth are engaged, theywill work harder, be persistent, see obstacles asopportunities rather than impediments, andcontinue to learn when not forced to do so to ful-fill their intrinsic need to understand. Orches-trating entertaining and interesting experiencesfor our youth should not be misunderstood asthe end; learning and achievement are the end.The marketers and advertisers understand howto seize the attention of our children. Theydevote enormous resources to discerning thetastes, dispositions, and preferences of ouryouth. Beginning teachers must tenaciouslycompete for the genuine attention of theirstudents.How can beginning teachers compete againstthe iPod and the daydream? In a prior researchstudy (Intrator, 2003), I shadowed high schoolstudents for more than a year throughout theiracademic classes in an effort to understandwhen students found genuine worth and valuein their academic experiences. Those teachersthat were most successful in securing the sus-tained concentration of students possessed twokey attributes that beginning teachers candevelop. First, they established a positive class-room environment and formed trusting rela-tionships with students. Second, they possesseda flexible and deep understanding of their sub-ject matter and continually sought points ofintersection between their subject matter andthe interests of their students.Fostering constructive relationships withstudents is too critical a factor in being a suc-cessful teacher to leave to mere serendipity.Beginning teachers can learn to create one-on-one time with students; learn about and practicedifferent approaches to listening, such as activelistening; develop coherent plans for classroomand management grounded in clear expecta-tions and fairness; learn about the developmen-tal patterns of the age group they are teaching;educate themselves about the context, neigh-borhood, and culture important to their stu-dents; and reach out to families to expand theirknowledge of their students. Each of these ele-ments is complex but critical to developing andmaintaining a constructive bond with students.Again the connection to students is an end initself and an asset in learning about whatattracts and sustains the interest of theirstudents.What made my student teacher with the redboots so ready for her own classroom was herability get her students excited about literatureand writing. She drew on deep content knowl-edge to develop curriculum that sparked inter-est and worked hard on communicating herown passion for the subject matter.We work at developing ways to translate thesubject matter frameworks into engaging cur-ricular experiences for students. For example,one of the first assignments I give to my studentteachers is to write a letter to your studentsexplaining what is beautiful, powerful, andexhilarating about the subject matter you teach.I encourage them to find language that willexplain what is tantalizing and beguiling aboutmath, or English, or biology.Student teachers often come to class the nextday having written an essay describing the ele-Journal of Teacher Education, Vol. 57, No. 3, May/June 2006 237