By Chad Lesausky
chad@sunriseclassroom.ai
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Teach Like a Champion: 10 Techniques Every New Teacher Should Master
There is a moment in every new teacher’s career when they realize something deeply unsettling: the kids are not automatically impressed. You walk in with your credential, your color-coded lesson plans, your Pinterest bulletin board that took six hours and half your will to live, and a fourteen-year-old in the back row looks at you like you just asked him to churn butter.
Teaching is not a vibes-based profession. It is not about hoping students “feel inspired” by your enthusiasm for cellular respiration. It is about execution. Clean, repeatable, boring-in-the-best-way execution. That is where Doug Lemov comes in.
Doug Lemov did something radical in his book Teach Like a Champion. He studied teachers who were actually getting results, then reverse-engineered what they were doing. No mystical nonsense. No “just be authentic.” Techniques. Playbooks. Moves.
Below are ten techniques every new teacher should master before worrying about being Teacher of the Year.
1. No Opt Out
A student says, “I don’t know.”
Your job is not to say, “That’s okay, sweetie.” Your job is to help them get to the answer. You can scaffold it. You can call on someone else and circle back. You can give a hint. The key principle is that everybody answers eventually.
No Opt Out builds accountability without humiliation. It tells students that thinking is not optional. Effort is not optional. Showing up mentally is not optional.
New teachers often confuse kindness with lowering the bar. Real kindness is refusing to let a kid check out.
2. Right Is Right
You ask, “What is the theme of the story?”
A student says, “It’s like, um, friendship.”
Close enough? Not exactly. If the theme is perseverance in the face of injustice, “friendship” is not correct.
Right Is Right means precision matters. Half-answers are not answers. Vague is not correct. Accuracy builds credibility. When students see that details count, they start caring about details.
Life is going to grade them on exactness. You are doing them a favor by doing the same.
3. Cold Call
Cold Call sounds terrifying until you realize it is liberating. Instead of relying on the same three eager volunteers who basically want to co-teach the class, you call on anyone at any time.
This changes everything. Suddenly everyone tracks the question. Everyone listens. Participation becomes universal, not elective.
Cold Call is not “gotcha.” It is normalizing engagement. If you build a safe culture and pair it with No Opt Out, students learn that thinking out loud is just part of the deal.
4. Wait Time
You ask a question. Silence.
New teachers panic at silence like it is a fire alarm. They jump in and answer their own question. That is how you end up teaching a class of thirty people who never actually think.
Wait Time means you ask, then you wait. Three to five seconds feels like an eternity. It is not. It is processing time. It is respect for cognition.
Students will rise to the level of thinking you allow.
5. Stretch It
A student gives a correct answer. Many teachers move on immediately. Stretch It says, “Great. Now go further.”
“Why?”
“How do you know?”
“What evidence supports that?”
Rigor is not about harder worksheets. It is about deeper thinking. Stretch It builds intellectual stamina. Students stop seeing school as trivia night and start seeing it as analysis.
6. 100 Percent
This one sounds obvious until you try enforcing it.
100 Percent means everyone is with you before you proceed. Not 92 percent. Not “most of them.”
If two students are still talking, you wait. If three laptops are still open, you pause.
This is not about control for control’s sake. It is about clarity. Classrooms run on shared attention. Partial compliance creates chaos. Full compliance creates calm.
Calm classrooms feel safe. Safe classrooms learn.
7. Strong Voice
Strong Voice does not mean yelling. It means economy of language and presence.
Stand still. Make eye contact. Use fewer words. Repeat directions instead of negotiating them. Avoid tacking on “okay?” at the end of every sentence like you are asking permission to teach your own class.
Authority in the classroom is mostly about confidence and consistency. Students can smell hesitation from the hallway.
8. Warm Up
The first five minutes of class determine the next fifty.
A Warm Up is a short, focused task students complete independently the moment they walk in. No chaos. No wandering. No existential debates about pencils.
The Warm Up signals that learning begins immediately. It builds routine. Routine builds momentum. Momentum builds trust.
A predictable opening reduces anxiety for students who crave structure more than they admit.
9. Check for Understanding
You cannot teach on autopilot. You must constantly assess whether students are actually getting it.
Mini whiteboards. Quick writes. Thumbs up or down. Strategic questioning.
Checking for understanding prevents the nightmare of finishing a beautiful lesson only to discover that half the class thinks the Civil War was in the 1990s.
Instruction without feedback is performance art. Instruction with feedback is teaching.
10. Tight Transitions
Transitions are where classrooms fall apart. Moving from discussion to group work. From group work to independent practice. From “Okay, wrap it up” to “Why is someone now juggling a glue stick?”
Tight transitions mean you script the movement. Clear directions. Timers. Practice if necessary.
Efficiency is not robotic. It is respectful. You respect students’ time by not wasting it.
The Bigger Point
New teachers often believe their biggest problem is content knowledge. Rarely true. Most of the time the issue is execution. Systems. Habits. Techniques that prevent small problems from becoming giant ones.
Lemov’s work is not glamorous. It is granular. That is why it works. Mastery comes from doing the small things consistently well.
Teaching is a craft. Crafts require tools. These ten techniques are foundational tools. Use them relentlessly. Refine them daily. Reflect on them weekly.
Confidence in the classroom is not magic. It is competence repeated.
A champion is not someone who shouts the loudest or decorates the cutest bulletin board. A champion is someone whose students learn more than they thought possible because the adult in the room refuses to leave it to chance.
New teachers do not need superhero capes. They need reps with the right moves.
Master the moves. The rest gets easier.
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Education Rickshaw. S5E08: Doug Lemov on “What to Do” and Active Observation Techniques
https://educationrickshaw.com/2025/11/10/s5e08-doug-lemov-on-what-to-do-and-active-observation-techniques/
Educational Renaissance. “Teach Like a Champion” for the Classical Classroom
https://educationalrenaissance.com/2020/06/20/teach-like-a-champion-for-the-classical-classroom-part-2-teacher-driven-professional-development/
IRIS Connect Blog. 7 Tips for Teaching Like a Champion
https://blog.irisconnect.com/uk/blog/7-tips-for-teaching-like-a-champion
Inclusive Schools Network Blog. What We Are Reading: Teach Like a Champion
https://inclusiveschools.org/blog/what-we-are-reading-teach-like-a-champion/
