Notes - Five themes: Mental models and purposeful execution

Teach like a champion 3.0: 63 techniques that put students on the path to college - Lemov Doug 2021

Notes
Five themes: Mental models and purposeful execution

1. 1. If you're new to Teach Like a Champion and don't follow all the wherefores and whys here, don't worry. You can get full explanations of all the terms and variations in Cold Calling (technique 34) in Chapter Seven.

2. 2. I am just showing you how to be hilarious in an ironic, talking-to-teenagers kind of way with this comment about the Kardashians. I actually have no idea who the Kardashians are—I only know they're famous. Also, if you're wondering about taking advice on humor from me, my teenaged kids tell me I'm truly hilarious (“OMG, Dad, you're so hilarious” [insert withering stare]).

3. 3. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED298122

4. 4. http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/radiology.pdf.

5. 5. https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/WILLINGHAM%282%29.pdf.

6. 6. Paul A. Kirschner, John Sweller, and Richard E. Clark, “Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work: An Analysis of the Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-Based, Experiential, and Inquiry-Based Teaching,” Educational Psychologist 41, no. 2 (2006): 75—86. http://mrbartonmaths.com/resourcesnew/8.%20Research/Explicit%20Instruction/Why%20minimal%20guidance%20instruction%20does%20not%20work.pdf.

7. 7. This is the difference between “performance” and “learning.”

8. 8. And of course you can only look up what you already know is relevant and connected.

9. 9. Graham Nuthall, Hidden Lives of Learners (NZCER Press, 2007), p. 69.

10. 10. Baumeister et al. proposed this concept in a 1998 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, “Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource?” They found, for example, that “people who forced themselves to eat radishes instead of tempting chocolates subsequently quit faster on unsolvable puzzles than people who had not had to exert self-control,” and that “an initial task requiring high self-regulation made people more … prone to favor [a] passive-response option.” Some further research has challenged their findings.

11. 11. David T. Neal, Wendy Wood, and Jeffrey M. Quinn, “Habits—A Repeat Performance,” Current Directions in Social Science (August 1, 2006), https://dornsife.usc.edu/assets/sites/545/docs/Wendy_Wood_Research_Articles/Habits/Neal.Wood.Quinn.2006_Habits_a_repeat_performance.pdf.

12. 12. Nuthall's research involved taping and studying a sample of students during each lesson. He was often uninterested in what the teacher did and very interested in what students did and how it affected their learning. Many of his most interesting observations come from moments when we hear the children, whom he has mic'd, talking to themselves after an interaction with a teacher, for example.

13. 13. www.researchgate.net/publication/225304965_The_role_of_selective_attention_on_academic_foundations_A_cognitive_neuroscience:perspective.

14. 14. Ironically for a computer scientist, he has managed to achieve this himself by dramatically restricting the presence of technology, with its strong tendency to fracture and distract his concentration, as the title of another of his books, Digital Minimalism, suggests. (I recommend both it and Deep Work.)

15. 15. The phrase was coined by Sophie Leroy at the University of Minnesota, based on her research on workplace productivity.

16. 16. https://hbr.org/2018/03/to-control-your-life-control-what-you-pay-attention-to.

17. 17. The other is—yup, you guessed it—the naked mole rat. They, too, will sacrifice unto the last full measure of devotion for one another. But God bless the little fellas, I don't mind being outshone by them one bit—they're miraculous and quirky in a dozen ways. Also—honestly—they're funny looking and don't smell great. Let them have eusociality to brag about, I say.

18. 18. Peps Mccrea, Motivated Teaching: Harnessing the Science of Motivation to Boost Attention and Effort in the Classroom, p. 74.

19. 19. Everyone learns from people without having strong relationships. You have and will again have to learn many times in settings where the teacher did not know you from Adam—a large lecture in your university days or a Khan Academy video are examples. Obviously, as teachers we want to build relationships that help students thrive but it's important to be clear that everyone can and will have to learn in situations where a relationship doesn't exist at different times throughout their lives.

20. 20. Tom's remarks were made in a series of tweets on March 5, 2021.

21. 21. You've probably seen videos on the Internet of teachers who give each child their own distinctive greeting at the door. Arrival is a celebration of personalized handshakes and fist bumps. I find them lovely too. If you want to be that teacher, wonderful, but recognize that thousands of teachers build enduring relationships with students without those moves and, furthermore, the results are only likely to be substantive and enduring if you also teach well, your students feel safe, and you let them know that you see them for who they are.