There have been repeated calls for educational researchers to increase their use of interpretive and naturalistic research paradigms to study, understand, and explain what happens in classrooms. A review of educational research literature, however, revealed only a few naturalistic studies of life in the classroom. Encouragingly, it appears that the number of qualitative studies at the elementary level are increasing; however, studies of teaching at the secondary level are comparatively few. In addition, because of the difficulty in obtaining a random sample and controlling for variables, there are few pretest-posttest, control group studies in education. So, while many articles state what should be done in American classrooms, there are very few documenting what specific activities and strategies are being used. This study uses both naturalistic and empirical methodology to investigate the classroom dynamics of a novice teacher and a veteran teacher to better understand how experience impacts the classroom.