Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

04.29.21 Erica Woolway: Lessons Learned from a Pandemic Year, Part 3.

In this final post in lessons learned from a year of disruption, we’ll focus on things remote instruction revealed the full importance of more clearly. Perhaps one of the biggest things we learned was how quickly an online class can die a slow death if a a norm is passivity rather than a norm of engagement…


01.07.15 Erica Woolway: Handling the Student Who Has to Leave the Group (video)

My colleague and co-author Erica Woolway and I spend a lot of time watching video of great teaching with our team. Often times the things that excite us most are the things that are the most mundane- a teacher mastering some small challenge that all teachers struggle with, with deftness and skill. So useful! That’s just…


02.11.14 How to Celebrate Valentines Day

I am an educator, but I am also a parent, and I am writing this blog post as a parent because I just figured out two things: 1) How to support the teachers in my kids’ schools doing hard and challenging work and 2) How to celebrate Valentines Day. Some explanation: I just met with a…


07.22.13 Teach NOLA and a Whole New Approach to Practice (Video)

Another guest post from Erica Woolway this evening… this one with an amazing video accompaniment. Check out this clip from Josh Gardner (TNTP seasonal staff and KIPP NOLA Math Teacher) in New Orleans as he teaches his fellows to practice using non-verbal directions until they become automatic.   We have worked with TNTP for the past…


07.06.13 Teaching New Teachers: Erica’s Observations from Nashville

I’m taking a little time off this week (remembering to actually take vacation is definitely the “50th technique” everyone asks about).  To keep the thread going here on the blog i asked my partner and co-author Erica Woolway to share some thoughts about teacher training from some of our work with TNTP’s Nashville Teaching Fellows.  As usual…