In today’s classrooms, teachers face pressure from multiple sources: national and local policies, school policies, colleagues, parents, and students. Some of these pressures lead to complications within the institute of the school system, while others more directly influence teacher practice, but all have an impact on classrooms. The most notable challenges that teachers face come from conflicting demands and ideals with which they have to contend. Among these conflicting demands are, (1) the simultaneous increase in standardization along with the call for differentiation; (2) participation in an increasingly multicultural world while schools continue to be mostly segregated; and (3) the commitment to cover certain amounts of content while stressing the importance of the depth of information taught. At the classroom level, teachers will be unable to address the institutional problems inherent in education, but can seek to mediate their effects on students through some of the ideas of thinkers like Pestalozzi, Sukhomlinsky, and Montessori.