Doug Lemov's Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College offers teachers nitty-gritty tips and tools for improving effectiveness in the classroom?and it made a big splash this past spring and summer, rising to one of the top-selling books on Amazon.com. But why the high demand for something ostensibly so simple? The answer may be because these types of practical approaches are not taught in traditional education schools, the institutions that prepare the vast majority of our nation's K-12 teachers. As revealed in our recent survey of ed school professors, these professors place scant importance on preparing teachers to manage classroom discipline or to work with state standards, tests, and accountability systems. Rather, ed profs champion less tangible ideals such as preparing teachers to be life-long learners and to have high expectations of all of their students (see survey results below). These concepts are important, no doubt; but can teachers realize these ideals without any concrete tools? Seems like building a table without a hammer.
