Revisiting Teach Like a Champion

 As an instructional coach in a BSD middle school, I have intermittently blogged about teaching and learning. The gist is this: I choose a theme, summarize some of the experts’ findings, and provide a few specific strategies from the resources and/or my own experience that teachers can apply immediately. 

When I first became an instructional coach several years ago, I was given a copy of Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion 2.0,  as was every teacher in my building. And I have relied heavily on it as a resource for both new and experienced teachers, when we’re looking to increase student engagement and learning in individual classrooms. My own copy is dog-earned, annotated, and full of sticky notes. I have frequently referred to, even quoted, excerpts of Teach Like a Champion in my blog posts; I have been a veritable peddler of many of the strategies it contains. 

Now I have a new role in the Teaching and Learning office for our district. Like all our middle and high school staff, I participated in a full-day launch of the professional learning that our district will center this year: anti-racist instructional practices and dismantling white supremacy culture. And so I’m taking a closer look at all of my practices through the lens of white supremacy culture.

I found the resource we were asked to read by Tema Okun to be particularly helpful in identifying the characteristics of a white supremacy culture and providing antidotes to mitigate the effects. And while I wasn’t completely surprised at the critique that Joe Truss, who is supporting our district in this work, made of Doug Lemov and Teach Like a Champion, I did feel it. As Sparks says, if you’re stomach ain’t churnin’ you’re not learnin’. The video excerpt that Joe chose from TLAC’s video bank sure did show some of the hallmarks of white supremacy culture: only one right way and “I’m the only one", to name a few. Joe argued, it seems, that the strategies I have actively promoted further entrench white supremacy culture in our schools. It gave me real pause; my stomach churned.

Part of me resisted, instinctively. Surely, there must be parts of Lemov’s work that are just plain good teaching. But I also know enough about that instinctive resistance to give it a careful look. And I know that others who have worked with me over the years are asking the same question. What about Teach Like a Champion? 

So I’m embarking on some self-study, going back through my old posts, the strategies I promoted, and looking carefully at them through the lens of dismantling white supremacy culture. I anticipate that I’ll discover some that show a need to learn and do better; I also anticipate finding some that I’ll continue to posit have legitimate pedagogical value. I commit to not fall prey to either or thinking and to check my own defensiveness about the work that I have loved. I hope you’ll join me. 

For Further Reading

Teach Like It's 1895

www.dismantlingracism.org