Teach Like a Champion? „Teachers need to be the best version of themselves,“ says Doug Lemov

EDUkační LABoratoř has published a translation of bestselling book for teachers Teach Like a Champion 3.0. Its author, Doug Lemov, has spent years observing and studying the work of many excellent teachers in schools across the United States and the United Kingdom. One thing they have in common – their students achieve many times better results than students from neighbouring schools.

Doug Lemov is the founder and Chief Knowledge officer at Teach Like a Champion. He was a managing director of Uncommon Schools and he was formerly the managing director for Uncommon’s upstate New York schools. Before that he was Vice President for Accountability at the State University of New York Charter Schools Institute and was a founder, teacher, and principal of the Academy of the Pacific Rim Charter School in Boston. He has taught English and history at the university, high school, and middle school levels. He holds a BA from Hamilton College, an MA from Indiana University, and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Visit him at teachlikeachampion.com.

They work in areas of high deprivation, and yet, their students achieve exceptional outcomes: Such teachers have been your fascination, inspiration and the source of techniques you write about in Teach Like a Champion. Is there anything else all of them have in common?

Part of the answer, interestingly, is no. By which I mean there is no “type”… there’s nothing you have to be like, no style you have to use, to be a great teacher. You can be an introvert or an extrovert. Funny or serious. Great teachers come in all styles and you can be great and still be ‘you’… which is really important. What I’ve sought to describe is not a formula but a set of tools that people can use to be the best version of themselves.

That said the answer “no” above is only part of the truth. Generally speaking I think the best teachers are hungry to learn and improve. They take pleasure in mastering the craft of teaching. And I think it’s really important for there to be ways to keep the job interesting for those people. If we don’t create pathways for people who love to think about the craft of teaching to get constantly better, many of them will seek challenges elsewhere and leave the profession.

Teach Like a Champion has come out in three editions already. What makes the most current one stand out?

In the third edition I’ve tried to be much more explicit about connecting the technique to cognitive science. One thing that cognitive science tells us is that having a mental model—a clear picture in your mind of what the desired outcome looks like—helps to make decisions under complex circumstances. So the first chapter is explicit about defining five key principles that should inform a teacher’s mental model of the classroom: they summarize what we know about learning, memory, habits, relationships.  When you can see the goal more clearly you make better decisions about how, when and why to use a given tool along the way.

Another key difference is the emphasis on Lesson Preparation—there’s a whole chapter on it! It’s different from lesson planning. It’s how you get ready to teach so you and your students are successful. Interestingly a lot of what that entails is thinking about limitations on our own working memory as teachers. Basically there are always too many things to observe and think about at any given moment for a teacher.

There are 63 techniques in your book, ranging from a “strong start” of lessons to effective delivery of consequences if students misbehave. How relevant are they across varying school levels?

They’re all tools. And tools are used to solve problems. Some problems are more relevant in some settings. But there are also a lot of consistencies. Take behavior. Is it more important with older students that they understand why you are asking them to do certain things? Absolutely. Will you have to be clearer at the outset about your expectations and why you have them and will you have to frame the reasons in terms of “purpose” rather than “power”? Probably. But all people—adults, young people, small children—are highly influenced by their perception of peer norms. We are a species of group formers and we want to know what is required of us to belong. Peps Mccrea writes that the greatest single influence on behavior and motivation is the individual’s perception of the peer norm. So we always want to magnify the visibility of positive norms to shape culture.

I guess this is a way of saying, every setting is different—every teacher; every subject; every group of students—but all settings have much more in common that people often think and applying similar principles in slightly different ways is often the fastest route to success.

What is your take on teacher positivity and praise? You say they are often misunderstood. Why?

Great question! There’s a lot of well-intentioned misinformation about praise. Its purpose is to build positive classroom environments. That’s a good thing. But the proposed means of getting there are often wrong and sometimes counter-productive. In the US teachers are often told to “praise five times as often as you criticize” or to “use a praise sandwich”—that is, say something nice, give constructive feedback, and then say something else nice.

This is poor advice. To believe that we have to say two nice things to be able to say, “Your writing is unclear because you use passive verbs. Go back and try to re-write it using active verbs,” to a student is to suggest that young people are fragile. And of course when we praise disingenuously over and over to make a bit of criticism go down students learn to disregard our praise. And praise is a powerful tool! It helps people know what to replicate.

I suggest the idea of positive framing instead. This is the idea that we can give direct, clear constructive criticism that still builds a positive culture if we are attentive to our language. If we can challenge students–“See if you can revise that using active verbs,” or talk aspirations—“I think your writing is getting good enough now that you’re ready to focus on using more active verbs”—we can express our belief in students in an honest and genuine way and stop wasting time giving them false praise that they know isn’t sincere.

Teach Like a Champion promotes high academic ethos, aiming at, among other, maximizing students‘ attendance to teachers and peers. Simultaneously, you write that this behavior is not quite natural to humans. Why should then teachers create something artificial, if the world outside of the classroom does not resemble it?

I would argue that there is no “neutral” culture in the classroom. We are always aiding the construction of a culture- the question is whether we will do so intentionally with learning and thriving in mind or whether we will let decisions devolve to the forces that shape it when the person in authority neglects doing so. I know a lot of teachers in the US who think that what emerges when they don’t shape culture intentionally is “theirs” meaning it belongs to the students and expresses their values and desires. I think that’s untrue. What you get is what grows in a vacuum. Many of the students actually don’t like it when culture is set by the loudest among them, for example, and they feel pressure to go along with it.

Our responsibility is to build cultures in the classroom that maximize learning and the psychological well being of our young people. That requires the intentional and benevolent exercise of authority. Some people are uncomfortable with that word: authority. They confuse it with ‘authoritarianism.” But really those words are opposites. You have been entrusted with authority for a reason—families rely on you to help their children thrive. If you do not use the authority you allow others to be the authority in your classroom and their goal is rarely to maximize the well-being and learning of all 30 pupils. 

Many teachers see themselves as creative practitioners with a degree of autonomy. However, Teach Like a Champion might come across quite prescriptive. Do you ever encounter criticism saying that teaching the way you suggest is too uniform?

As I mentioned I think this is a misreading. I try to be very clear in the book. I am describing a set of tools teachers can use. This is why I think the first chapter is so important. It’s designed to help teachers make wise decisions about when and how to use the techniques—and when not to use them.

Your book is all about efficiency and raising students‘ attainment. How does student and teacher wellbeing fit into this?

I think people are happy when they are productive. When their time is honored and when the culture in the classroom reminds them constantly that they and their learning are important. Many of the techniques are about maximizing ‘belonging signals.”

Here’s a passage from the preface where I discuss that issue:

Let me explain what I mean by describing a moment in the life of a student. We’ll call her Asha. She is sitting in Biology class and has just had an idea. It’s half developed—a notion still—but she wonders if she has thought of something that others have not. Maybe this is something smart. She’s a bit scared to share what she’s thinking. Her idea could be wrong or, just as bad, obvious already to everyone else. Maybe no one else cares much about DNA recombination and the fire it has suddenly lit in her mind. Maybe saying something earnest about DNA recombination makes you that kid—the one who raises her hand too often, who tries too hard, who breaks the social code. These sorts of thoughts have heretofore led her to adhere to a philosophy that counsels Keep it to yourself; don’t let anyone see your intellect; take no risks; fit in. But somehow in this moment the desire to voice her thought overcomes her anxiety. She raises her hand and her teacher calls on her.

What happens next is critical to Asha’s future: Will her classmates seem like they care about her idea? Will she read interest in their faces? Will they nod and show their appreciation? Ask a follow-up question? Jot down a phrase in their notes? Or will they be slouched in their chairs and turned away, checking their phones literally or metaphorically, their body language expressing their indifference? Oh, did you say something? Smirk. Will the next comment ignore her idea? Will there even be a next comment, or will her words drift away in a silence that tells her that no one cared enough to acknowledge or even look at her after she spoke?

Yes, it matters whether her teacher responds to her comment with encouragement—but perhaps not as much as what the social environment, the rest of Asha’s peers, communicate. If her teacher praises Asha’s comment amidst scorn and resounding silence from her peers, the benefit will be limited. The teacher’s capacity to shape norms in Asha’s classroom matters at least as much as her ability to connect individually with Asha. Relationships matter, but the social norms we create probably matter more.

While feedback is one of the key topics of your book, Teach Like a Champion does not mention grading explicitly. Should teachers grade students‘ work?

I think so. It’s a form of honesty. We have to help students improve and we have to help students know where they stand so they have the best hope to accomplish their dreams.

You’re known for identifying parallels between academic teaching to sports coaching. What is it that both have in common? And how can teachers benefit from this comparison?

One of the things I’ve learned about most working with coaches in developing athletes is how important perception is to decision-making. To a footballer or a hockey player, sometimes the perception is almost the decision. You can’t make a pass to a teammate you don’t perceive. You can’t defend if you aren’t looking for the right cues. I think teaching is very similar. You can’t make decisions about things you don’t perceive in the classroom. And I think we can take steps to make it so teachers can perceive more of what’s important in the classroom. I discuss quite a bit of that in the chapter on lesson preparation and a lot of that comes from my experiences in the world of sport.

AI and language models have been conquering our world. How will they impact teaching and learning?

The short answer is: I don’t know. But to me the soul of teaching is a relationship between students and knowledge that is mediated by a person, a teacher, and I think it’s highly unlikely that teachers and teaching will become irrelevant any time soon. So I choose to spend my time thinking about that.

Operating predominantly in schools serving areas of social disadvantage, you and your books aim at narrowing the education gap both in the US and worldwide. Have you been successful at this? What is your track record?

Well obviously it’s tricky to run, say, a randomized control trial in schools but if you look at the top performing schools in most parts of the US and much of the UK, especially the ones that achieve great things with students of poverty, a large number use or apply the techniques in the classroom. Many times these are schools with results that are four or five times better than the schools around them. We also have data from settings like ‘high-poverty schools.”

After many years spent in schools and looking into effective teacher practice, are there still things about teaching and learning that would catch you by surprise?

Always. I think that’s what I like about teaching so much. It’s so complex and teachers are such excellent problem solvers. Every time I revise the book I think: “That’s it; that’s the last one” because it’s so hard to write a book. But usually about a week later I notice some teacher doing some brilliant thing I’d never thought of. And I get out my notebook and start making notes towards the next edition.

Pavel Bobek & EDU