Teach Like a Champion: A Review
Inevitably all Peace Corps Volunteers will find themselves in the role of a teacher at one point or another during their service. Be it in a formal classroom setting or in the context of a health center, small business, community garden, familial or farm setting, as volunteers we have been brought here to promote sustainable development, which now more than ever is recognized as critically dependent on education. As such, Doug Lemov’s ‘Teach Like a Champion’ should be in high demand among volunteers, considering it’s straightforward, and ‘actionable’ approach to elucidating the mysteries of great teaching.
‘Specific, concrete, and actionable’ teaching techniques are what ‘Teach Like a Champion’ attempts to convey in its 300-plus of pages. To this end, Lemov lists and describes in detail 49 such techniques that purportedly distinguish the common teacher from the outstanding. Discreet techniques with names such as ‘No Opt Out’ and ‘Cold Call’—described further below—are the bread and butter of the text that seeks to span what Lemov describes as a breach between theoretical studies and practical application in education.
Writes Lemov in the book’s introduction: “One of the biggest ironies […] is that many of the tools likely to yield the strongest classroom results remain essentially beneath the notice of our theories and theorists of education.” Thus, rather than pursuing an inductive line of study by which to select the techniques presented in the book, the process began with state-wide and national test scores and worked back to find the teachers responsible for generating systematically superior results. Once the teachers capable of producing improved student performance had been identified, the search for techniques became one of observing and videotaping those teachers and looking for commonalities between them
When one forgives the oversight that student learning cannot be universally and ideally measured by standardized test scores—and therefore the possibility that the teachers selected for observation may have been chosen imperfectly—, one can see the elegance of this data-driven reasoning. It allows for research and insight that penetrates beyond superficial discussions for example on the topic importance of holding high expectations for students or engaging students in lessons, and allows for accessing directly ‘what works.’ Still, the book provides linkages with contemporary education theory as all of the techniques discussed are classified into one of nine much published-upon categories: Setting High Academic Expectations, Planning that Ensures Academic Achievement, Structuring and Delivering Your Lessons, Engaging Your Students in Your Lessons, Creating a Strong Classroom Culture, Setting and Maintaining High Behavioral Expectations, Building Character and Trust, Improving Your Pacing: Additional Techniques for Creating a Positive Rhythm in the Classroom, and Challenging Students to Think Critically.
The first technique discussed is entitled ‘No Opt Out’ and is classified as a technique intended to set high academic expectations of students. It works as follows: if I, as the teacher, ask a student a question that he or she declines to answer either out of ignorance or laziness, I should not move on in the lesson until I the correct answer has been achieved and, importantly, the student who earlier could not answer has repeated the correct answer. The justification for this technique is, first and foremost, that it eliminates the incentive for students to respond ‘I don’t know’ to a question by asking them to do as much if not more work when they give this answer as when they are able to provide the correct response to a question. Further, that ‘No Opt Out’ sets the expectation of students that they are accountable for learning the information that they do not know. In effect, it emphasizes that students are expected to take responsibility for their own learning.
When combined with another teaching technique named ‘Cold Call’, ‘No Opt Out’ also becomes an effective way of engaging students and keeping those not involved in the question-and-answer process applying themselves to finding the answer nonetheless. In essence ‘Cold Call’ is the process of randomly selecting students to answer questions posed by the teacher. Not only as a manner of keeping students engaged but also as a comprehension check and a method by which to distribute work more evenly across a class, according to Lemov this is ‘the single most powerful technique in this book’.
Still, there are qualifiers; in order for ‘Cold Call’ to be effective, it is important that it be conducted in a way that is predictable, in order that students anticipate being called on and therefore pay closer attention, systematic, to prevent the activity from becoming a punishment, thereby discouraging participation, and positive so as to promote participation in other contexts by allowing students to answer questions correctly.
The text supplements descriptions of techniques such as ‘No Opt Out’ and ‘Cold Call’ with examples of how they have been used by ‘champion’ teachers, as well as a DVD that accompanies the book with videos of such examples. While long-winded at times, generally the tone is straightforward and the techniques are readily accessible and replicable. Also, it may take a few reads before any technique can stick fully, perhaps making the book a better reference for classroom problem solving than something to sit down with and read straight through.
