Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

02.17.23 What Is Positive Framing: An Excerpt from TLAC 3.0

  My friend Ravi Gupta recently interviewed me on the Sweat the Technique podcast and one of the techniques he asked about most was Positive Framing–Technique 59 in TLAC 3.0.  His questions made me realize how critical this technique was- how frequently it is at the center of efforts to build vibrant and successful culture, in…


08.25.21 Joe Mazzulla’s NBA-Level Positive Framing

  Over the past year or two I’ve had the pleasure of working occasionally with Joe Mazzulla. Joe is an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics and this summer was the head coach of their NBA Summer League Team.  He also wrote two really great side bars in The Coach’s Guide to Teaching. The NBA’s summer…


02.12.18 Coaching Words: You Don’t, You Didn’t, You Must, We Will

The language we use to help people know how to grow and improve is important. When we give feedback, we’re giving technical information but we’re always also building culture between and among us at the same time. I found myself thinking about language when I recently heard some coaching interactions on the youth sports field but…


03.16.17 Lessons in Practice from the Seattle Seahawks

My Practice Perfect co-author Katie Yezzi recently came across a pretty amazing video of Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll talking about practice and his approach to it.  Beyond the key takeaway that practice is incredibly important to any performance profession–“Practice is everything,” Carroll says in the video–there are a ton of useful lessons for those…


09.06.16 On Coaching: How Kelvin Jones Uses Feedback to Build Culture

Last week I posted some video of Virginia ODP soccer coach Kelvin Jones’ training session with players at his home club in Williamsburg, Va.  The video showed some of what made his models so successful and was pretty popular so I thought I’d share a bit more from Kelvin’s session– this time on a different topic….