Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

01.03.24 Working Memory, Teachers and Tracking Data

Posted a quick note on Twitter the other day about working memory and teachers- how using a clip board to note observations could allow teachers to free their working memory and thus be more responsive to students as they interacted. Having an exemplar–an ideal student answer you’d like to get to–written out and carried around with…


12.13.23 Lasting Change at Scale: Lessons From Our Work With Harmony Public Schools

  42,000 students and counting…   In October, our Consulting & Partnerships team completed a 30-month partnership (March 2021-September 2023) with Texas’ largest charter school network, Harmony Public Schools. Our role was to help the network refine its vision for instructional leadership, then build training and systems to study progress across its 55 (now 60) schools. …


12.12.23 Classic Clips: Eric Snider “Establishes Meaning” in The Giver

  We’re getting ready to lead a two day workshop on Reading Reconsidered in Raleigh, NC on January 18 and 19 (details here).  As part of the preparation we were going over some older reading footage and we found this gem from Eric Snider. It’s a short clip and if you watched it you could be…


12.08.23 Teaching Advice From Taylor (Swift)

  A colleague who attended our recent workshop for medical educators, Josie Amory of Seattle, WA, passed along this Instagram post from Taylor Swift about her concert preparation routine: “This insta post reminded me of the discussion we had about working memory and habits good teachers use to reduce their dependence on working memory, which in…


12.08.23 New Team Members and New Roles on the TLAC Team

We often introduce ourselves in our workshops by sharing that Teach Like a Champion is more than just a book, but that we are actually a team of people who have come together to study teaching with the belief  that any contemplation of a more just, equitable and inclusive society requires that schools are not just…