free website templates css xhtml

HELP me with CSS Please!?
im in a css scripting class in high school its pretty basic, but for this project i have to create a website with a whole bunch of stuff, i thought why dont i just forget it and copy some css layout from the internet. So i have the free webtemplate but there is some crazy stuff on the top of the HTML page it reads this:
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
WTF is all that i cannot turn that in with all that crazy code on it. bceasue my teacher knows i dont know wtf that is…so i tried deleting it and it screws up all my margins and navigation bar and every thing……….my question is how do i keep my nice looking template while getting rid of or dumbing down that fancy code???
DOCTYPE is just for standards and stuff, you can delete it,
remove everythign from inside
change template to what you want the title to say in the top of the browser. (or completely remove
Delete the meta line completey
you also need to close head if you keep it ()
put a
then at the end and
How to make web page: xhtml 1.1