For probably the entire length of my pedagogical-reading life (so about the past two years),Teach like a Champion, by Doug Lemov, has been recommended to me by every book-buying and library searching website out there. I've ignored it mostly because I'm suspicious of anything that frames teaching in terms of competition, or claims to make you a champion at anything (I don't eat Wheaties, either). But for the past few weeks I've been really struggling with classroom management in one particular class, and in my desperation, I thought maybe the book would have some tips. I took it out of the library yesterday-boy, am I glad I didn't spend money on it.
The fact that all the commendations on the back of the book come from the CEOs of "education companies," as opposed to educational researchers and teachers, should have given me my first clue. The fact that the list of teachers who are already "champions" included not one single teacher who was professionally trained, and not one single teacher who doesn't teach at a charter, did, in fact, give me a funny feeling. But, OK, useful tips come from all kinds of sources. So I plowed on into the book.
What I found was really disturbing. First off, unlike every other pedagogy book I've read (even the ones that are claiming that we need to go "back to basics," which I usually disagree with), there was no discussion in the book at all about how kids will best understand things, or how to best steer kids towards what works for them or even how to get kids interested in the material you're teaching. The entire book basically detailed a very comprehensive way of making sure that kids do EXACTLY what you want them to do in the classroom at all times. This includes penalizing kids for not having their eyes "tracking" you at all times, for losing their place in the reading book, for giving you answers that are not phrased in complete sentences, for speaking in dialect, for NOT HAVING MATERIALS ON THEIR DESKS ARRANGED IN THE CORRECT FORMAT (homework in the upper left corner, apparently), for not smiling (although this is tactic is optional for teachers, apparently), for giving you answers that are "almost correct" (meaning answers that aren't phrased exactly the way you want them to be), and for saying "I don't know" in response to a question. Lemov characterizes this method of classroom management as "having high standards," but to me it sounds suspiciously like a combination of army and prison. Sure, I want my students to pay attention. Yes, I would prefer that they not lose their places in the book we're reading. But I also know that they're human. How many adults have jobs where they have to track one particular speaker every second for 8 hours a day? Do the guards at Buckingham Palace have 8 hour shifts? No, they don't. Because it's humanly impossible to maintain that kind of discipline for that long, even for trained adults. Imagine being a 9 year old kid and having to do it.
Now, some of the methods Lemov mentions are pretty good ones--he gives the example of walking a kid through the process of finding an answer if he/she doesn't know it. I do that a lot. But Lemov frames this tactic in terms of a power struggle; you don't want the kid to learn that saying "I don't know" is a way of getting out of doing what you want him/her to do (i.e., give the correct answer or participate). He also talks about the need for an orderly procedure for transitions between subjects-something I think most teachers would probably agree with. But again, for him this is not just about making transitions smooth-it's about saving precious time when you could be pounding facts into kids' heads. He actually tots up, at several points in the book, the exact number of minutes of instructional time per year you are saving by, say, having orderly transitions. Or shortening the sentences you use with students so that you say "Standard, please" instead of saying "How would you say that in Standard English?" (The irony in requiring students to use complete sentences when you don't use them yourself seems to elude him). He also mentions the time that can be wasted by a-asking students to connect literature to their lives, because their answers may lead you off topic, and b-(most horrifying to me!) allowing kids to ask questions. All, apparently, a terrible waste of instructional minutes; the question of whether the kids' brains are successfully processing the material seems not to concern him. (He assumes that if the kids are alert and can give you the exact answer you're looking for, they obviously are learning). This is the philosophy behind the current Obama admin push to lengthen school hours--the idea that time and amount learned can be exactly correlated because all you have to do is pour knowledge into students' heads. Do not pass go. Do not address understanding.(The question of how you'll know if students are confused if they are required to look engaged at all times, are not allowed to ask questions for the most part, and are not allowed to speak in the way they know-he makes no mention of teaching kids standard grammar before you require them to speak Standard English in class, so I'm assuming he just assumes they know it already--is never addressed. I know my students are confused when they LOOK confused. If they're required to smile, how would you know?)
Lemov never addresses the issue of what happens when some kids DON'T respond to the methods he offers. Every other pedagogical book I've ever read does address that issue, and I found the complete lack of reference to continually non-compliant kids very startling here. It made it pretty clear to me that Lemov buys into the "No Excuses" charter mantra; he assumes you can just kick those kids out. It's also pretty clear to me that very few middle class parents would stand for this kind of attitude towards their kids. It's really interesting to me that charters are being touted as the replacement for public schools....this book is so blatant about assuming that you'll only serve a very specific portion of the population. Which I guess is really the model the corporate educators want, but you'd think they'd want to hide it a little bit.
On the heels of reading this book, I had a conversation today with a friend whose son has just entered kindergarten in a New York public school. He has, apparently, a very good teacher who has been teaching for 28 years, but at the parent open house, this teacher informed the parents that some of the kids have entered KINDERGARTEN at too low a reading level and not able to write well enough, and that if they don't work on this with them at home, the kids will fail kindergarten. She explained that according to state standards, she is no longer allowed (as a kindergarten teacher, remember) to help kids learn the physical formation of letters, to review the letter sounds with them, or to tell them how to spell words correctly. They are supposed to come in knowing these things. Again, if they can't learn them at home, they'll fail kindergarten. It also seems (I'm assuming my friend knows this from the scuttlebutt around the school, not the teacher) that she really does have to do exactly as she's told, because she is a long-time teacher, and as such the principal has made it clear that she really wants to get rid of her. She costs too much, for one thing, and for another, she knows too much about how things should really be done. The principal is one of the new Broadies-she used to work on Wall Street. She doesn't see, apparently, why she should pay for experience when any schmuck can teach kindergarten (according to the new reform-y rhetoric). Yet all my friend had to do was describe how the teacher got the kids in line on the first day of school for me to know that this is a teacher who knows what she's doing, because of her experience.
I am horrified beyond words by all this-and I'm also thinking-this is why Doug Lemov's book, and other books like it, are suddenly seen as the greatest thing since sliced bread. It's a book for teachers who have no experience controlling a class, who aren't going to be in the classroom long enough to get that experience, who have never done student teaching for any length of time (because they're from TFA or similar programs), who likely don't have older teachers to ask about these things (because they've all been fired), and who at any rate are being fed a line which says that older teachers are useless, don't raise test scores and are just in it for themselves and their unions. It's also a book for teachers who are going to be teaching curriculum that is years beyond what their students actually know and can do (so they'll be teaching perennially frustrated students), and who need to be able to arrange it so that their students can pass standardized tests on this material. That's why the main emphasis in the book is on student response, rather than student understanding, and why the skills emphasized are the skills of tracking the teacher, keeping your finger on the place, and following orders. Going back to teach kids skills they need to know is, apparently, having "low standards," and won't help them score high on their grade's standardized test. Also, if you don't teach in a charter, you're probably not allowed to teach those skills anyway. I wonder a little bit if this is actually how corporate edu-formists imagine all non-wealthy children being educated after a while. My friend is, I would say, certainly middle class (although she belongs to that segment of the middle class that can't afford private school), but what's happening at her son's school is apparently now the rule in public schools all over New York. And she says that other states are starting to adopt this format as well.
Sometimes I really wonder how this will all end. The dramatic part of me likes to imagine that there will be some wide-ranging revolt, or some tipping point, but I'm starting to see that in America, that's not how it really works. Any revolt could just be not covered in the news (it wouldn't be, unless it was sanctioned by the Republicans), and it would be as if it never happened anyway. Business as usual continues in our fair land.
The fact that all the commendations on the back of the book come from the CEOs of "education companies," as opposed to educational researchers and teachers, should have given me my first clue. The fact that the list of teachers who are already "champions" included not one single teacher who was professionally trained, and not one single teacher who doesn't teach at a charter, did, in fact, give me a funny feeling. But, OK, useful tips come from all kinds of sources. So I plowed on into the book.
What I found was really disturbing. First off, unlike every other pedagogy book I've read (even the ones that are claiming that we need to go "back to basics," which I usually disagree with), there was no discussion in the book at all about how kids will best understand things, or how to best steer kids towards what works for them or even how to get kids interested in the material you're teaching. The entire book basically detailed a very comprehensive way of making sure that kids do EXACTLY what you want them to do in the classroom at all times. This includes penalizing kids for not having their eyes "tracking" you at all times, for losing their place in the reading book, for giving you answers that are not phrased in complete sentences, for speaking in dialect, for NOT HAVING MATERIALS ON THEIR DESKS ARRANGED IN THE CORRECT FORMAT (homework in the upper left corner, apparently), for not smiling (although this is tactic is optional for teachers, apparently), for giving you answers that are "almost correct" (meaning answers that aren't phrased exactly the way you want them to be), and for saying "I don't know" in response to a question. Lemov characterizes this method of classroom management as "having high standards," but to me it sounds suspiciously like a combination of army and prison. Sure, I want my students to pay attention. Yes, I would prefer that they not lose their places in the book we're reading. But I also know that they're human. How many adults have jobs where they have to track one particular speaker every second for 8 hours a day? Do the guards at Buckingham Palace have 8 hour shifts? No, they don't. Because it's humanly impossible to maintain that kind of discipline for that long, even for trained adults. Imagine being a 9 year old kid and having to do it.
Now, some of the methods Lemov mentions are pretty good ones--he gives the example of walking a kid through the process of finding an answer if he/she doesn't know it. I do that a lot. But Lemov frames this tactic in terms of a power struggle; you don't want the kid to learn that saying "I don't know" is a way of getting out of doing what you want him/her to do (i.e., give the correct answer or participate). He also talks about the need for an orderly procedure for transitions between subjects-something I think most teachers would probably agree with. But again, for him this is not just about making transitions smooth-it's about saving precious time when you could be pounding facts into kids' heads. He actually tots up, at several points in the book, the exact number of minutes of instructional time per year you are saving by, say, having orderly transitions. Or shortening the sentences you use with students so that you say "Standard, please" instead of saying "How would you say that in Standard English?" (The irony in requiring students to use complete sentences when you don't use them yourself seems to elude him). He also mentions the time that can be wasted by a-asking students to connect literature to their lives, because their answers may lead you off topic, and b-(most horrifying to me!) allowing kids to ask questions. All, apparently, a terrible waste of instructional minutes; the question of whether the kids' brains are successfully processing the material seems not to concern him. (He assumes that if the kids are alert and can give you the exact answer you're looking for, they obviously are learning). This is the philosophy behind the current Obama admin push to lengthen school hours--the idea that time and amount learned can be exactly correlated because all you have to do is pour knowledge into students' heads. Do not pass go. Do not address understanding.(The question of how you'll know if students are confused if they are required to look engaged at all times, are not allowed to ask questions for the most part, and are not allowed to speak in the way they know-he makes no mention of teaching kids standard grammar before you require them to speak Standard English in class, so I'm assuming he just assumes they know it already--is never addressed. I know my students are confused when they LOOK confused. If they're required to smile, how would you know?)
Lemov never addresses the issue of what happens when some kids DON'T respond to the methods he offers. Every other pedagogical book I've ever read does address that issue, and I found the complete lack of reference to continually non-compliant kids very startling here. It made it pretty clear to me that Lemov buys into the "No Excuses" charter mantra; he assumes you can just kick those kids out. It's also pretty clear to me that very few middle class parents would stand for this kind of attitude towards their kids. It's really interesting to me that charters are being touted as the replacement for public schools....this book is so blatant about assuming that you'll only serve a very specific portion of the population. Which I guess is really the model the corporate educators want, but you'd think they'd want to hide it a little bit.
On the heels of reading this book, I had a conversation today with a friend whose son has just entered kindergarten in a New York public school. He has, apparently, a very good teacher who has been teaching for 28 years, but at the parent open house, this teacher informed the parents that some of the kids have entered KINDERGARTEN at too low a reading level and not able to write well enough, and that if they don't work on this with them at home, the kids will fail kindergarten. She explained that according to state standards, she is no longer allowed (as a kindergarten teacher, remember) to help kids learn the physical formation of letters, to review the letter sounds with them, or to tell them how to spell words correctly. They are supposed to come in knowing these things. Again, if they can't learn them at home, they'll fail kindergarten. It also seems (I'm assuming my friend knows this from the scuttlebutt around the school, not the teacher) that she really does have to do exactly as she's told, because she is a long-time teacher, and as such the principal has made it clear that she really wants to get rid of her. She costs too much, for one thing, and for another, she knows too much about how things should really be done. The principal is one of the new Broadies-she used to work on Wall Street. She doesn't see, apparently, why she should pay for experience when any schmuck can teach kindergarten (according to the new reform-y rhetoric). Yet all my friend had to do was describe how the teacher got the kids in line on the first day of school for me to know that this is a teacher who knows what she's doing, because of her experience.
I am horrified beyond words by all this-and I'm also thinking-this is why Doug Lemov's book, and other books like it, are suddenly seen as the greatest thing since sliced bread. It's a book for teachers who have no experience controlling a class, who aren't going to be in the classroom long enough to get that experience, who have never done student teaching for any length of time (because they're from TFA or similar programs), who likely don't have older teachers to ask about these things (because they've all been fired), and who at any rate are being fed a line which says that older teachers are useless, don't raise test scores and are just in it for themselves and their unions. It's also a book for teachers who are going to be teaching curriculum that is years beyond what their students actually know and can do (so they'll be teaching perennially frustrated students), and who need to be able to arrange it so that their students can pass standardized tests on this material. That's why the main emphasis in the book is on student response, rather than student understanding, and why the skills emphasized are the skills of tracking the teacher, keeping your finger on the place, and following orders. Going back to teach kids skills they need to know is, apparently, having "low standards," and won't help them score high on their grade's standardized test. Also, if you don't teach in a charter, you're probably not allowed to teach those skills anyway. I wonder a little bit if this is actually how corporate edu-formists imagine all non-wealthy children being educated after a while. My friend is, I would say, certainly middle class (although she belongs to that segment of the middle class that can't afford private school), but what's happening at her son's school is apparently now the rule in public schools all over New York. And she says that other states are starting to adopt this format as well.
Sometimes I really wonder how this will all end. The dramatic part of me likes to imagine that there will be some wide-ranging revolt, or some tipping point, but I'm starting to see that in America, that's not how it really works. Any revolt could just be not covered in the news (it wouldn't be, unless it was sanctioned by the Republicans), and it would be as if it never happened anyway. Business as usual continues in our fair land.
