Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

01.05.16 Najee Carter: Systems, Routines & the Art of Positivity

Happy New Year from TLaC Towers! Just before the holidays we watched a clip of Najee Carter at North Star Alexander Street Elementary School. It left us feeling downright warm, fuzzy and full of holiday joy- not something one necessarily expects from a Systems and Routines clip! As a capstone to this season of giving, TLaC…


08.28.13 First Week Advice: Verbal and Non-Verbal Feedback with Do It Again

For many of us it’s the first week of school, a time when we focus on building healthy and positive routines for “how we do things” in school–from coming into the classroom to raising hands to supporting peers positively and respectfully to building off their ideas with classroom comments. One of the tools that’s most useful…


05.02.13 Sultanna Noormuhammad and How to Build a Teaching Community

This blog post is about a powerful—and simple, and short—email a great leader sent to her staff and how she packed value into a few short sentences…. A few weeks ago I blogged about the challenges of doing TLaC “on an island”—what it was like to trying try to implement a TLaC-ish approach as a lone…