A Conversation with Laurie Elish-Piper

Dr. Laurie Elish-Piper talks to us about building relationships in education, families as educational partners, and optimism in uncertain times. Laurie is known for her work with literacy assessment and teaching, literacy coaching to improve student learning, and teacher professional development. Laurie is a Distinguished Engagement Professor and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at Northern Illinois University where she currently serves as the Dean of the College of Education.

To cite this episode:
Persohn, L. (Host). (2020, Dec. 22). A conversation with Laurie Elish-Piper. (Season 1, No. 7) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/EA03-6D0A-C05D-1CCE-0A94-0

Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Transcript

Lindsay Persohn: 0:11

Education research has a problem. The work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. Classroom Caffeine is here to help. Each week I invite a top education researcher to sit down and talk with teachers about what they have learned from years of study. This week, Dr. Laurie Elish-Piper talks to us about building relationships in education, families as educational partners, and optimism in uncertain times. Laurie is known for her work with literacy assessments and teaching, literacy coaching to improve student learning, and teacher professional development. Laurie is a Distinguished Engagement Professor and a Distinguished Teaching Professor at Northern Illinois University, where she currently serves as the Dean of the College of Education. For more information about our guest, stay tuned to the end of this episode. So pour a cup of your favorite morning drink and join me your host, Lindsay Persohn, for Classroom Caffeine, research to energize your teaching practice. Today, I'm here with Dr. Laurie Elish-Piper. Laurie, I have just three questions for you in hopes that you will share some of your knowledge and expertise with teachers. Welcome to the show.

Laurie Elish-Piper: 1:36

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Lindsay Persohn: 1:38

Laurie, from your own experiences and education, will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now?

Laurie Elish-Piper: 1:46

Yes, I think that probably the most fundamental learning I have, as I reflect back on my experiences teaching is that teaching is a relationship. And anytime that things go well, it's because we have a relationship with our students, with our colleagues, with our students' families. And anytime that we struggle, it tends to be because we've not been able to build that relationship. And so as teachers are teaching remotely and in hybrid form, and in ways that they probably never thought they would be teaching, I think that that idea of building relationships and spending the time to get to know your students and get to know their families and get to know your colleagues becomes even more important. And so I think that that's probably the biggest takeaway that I have. And then I think another really important sort of big idea in my my reflecting on teaching is that there's so much that we could do as teachers, but we really need to focus on those things that are most essential and enduring, the things that students really need to know and understand and be able to do to move forward. And so a lot of times as teachers, we put great pressure on ourselves to accomplish this massive list of objectives or to get through all of the pages in a book, or to complete all of the strategies in a sequence. And that may not really be necessary, because a lot of those things are not really important for students moving forward. And so I think that giving ourselves permission to be professionals, and to reflect on and think about those things that are most essential and enduring that students need to know, not just today, or tomorrow or next week, but next year, and a decade from now, that become the building blocks for students to continue learning and growing and being successful not only in school, but in life. And so those are probably the two biggest ones that I tend to find myself oftentimes going back to when I think about what teaching means, not only for me, but what I hope others are thinking about in their teaching as well.

Lindsay Persohn: 3:47

I think we get so wrapped up in the latest and greatest and the newest mandates and trying to understand and translate that into what we're we're already trying to maintain that it is so hard to maintain that focus on relationships and and what matters. But when you boil it down to something so fundamental, I think that that is just such an important thing for us to keep our eye on as we move forward. So Laurie, what would you like teachers to know about your research?

Laurie Elish-Piper: 4:16

I'm going to talk about two bodies of research that I've I've been involved in. The first one might seem like a strange one to share. But I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the findings from research that I did with my colleague, Susan LAllier, on literacy coaching, but I'm going to talk about it from the teacher perspective. And so some of the findings that we had were that on there are really four activities, that when teachers engage in these activities, either with a coach or with a trusted peer. So I know that some schools are fortunate to have literacy coaches or instructional coaches, and others don't. But everybody has colleagues. Everybody has a trusted peer. Everybody has someone that they look up to, who they admire in their school or in their district or that they've met in other teaching circles that they can go to. And so those four activities that really predicted student achievement in reading and writing, were conferencing with someone else. And by conferencing, we just mean talking to someone else about your teaching, about your curriculum, about your students, about what you get stuck on, about what your successes are, about just basically what you're doing as a teacher. And so that conferencing is something that we can do, even in this strange, remote hybrid world, just talking to others about your teaching and talking deeply about your teaching, not just it's going great, or I had a bad day. But you know, what are you doing? What's working? You know, are there specific students that you're concerned about? Are there specific students who aren't responding in the way that you thought you would, they would to instruction, and that you're just kind of, you know, you're maybe out of ideas. And having someone to conference with is is important. Another piece that we learned in our research focused on the power of assessment, and talking with others about your assessment results. Oftentimes, we tend to think of assessment as this thing that gets done. And then we move on and we teach. But really to be informative, we know that assessment needs to then determine what and how you teach, and how you adjust your teaching and differentiate for students and so on. But our research indicated that sitting down and talking with someone about assessment results was a powerful predictor because it again allowed them to dig deep. It allowed them to really think intentionally and strategically about what to do. And also having a trusted peer, a trusted mentor with you oftentimes introduces new ideas that you as the teacher might not have thought about in terms of looking at that assessment. The third one was modeling, and having someone come in and model and we oftentimes talked with the teachers in our research about having a trusted peer or a mentor or a coach come in and model what we refer to as sometimes as the hard stuff. So like the things that you're struggling with, find someone who's doing it well. So if you're struggling with, you know, implementing, you know, writing instruction, or certain aspects of writing instruction, asking someone to come in and model that for you and show you what would it look like, or let me come into your classroom or your virtual classroom and see you doing that. A lot of times what happens is that teachers want to implement new practices, or teachers want to implement particular approaches, but they haven't seen it done. They haven't seen it done in the moment with real kids in real classrooms, in real spaces that are similar or the same as where they work. And so that modeling piece is powerful, many times, you know, seeing is believing. And once I see how someone does it, and I hear how they introduce it, and I understand how they're explaining things to students, or what that actually looks like that modeling can be transformational in helping teachers enhance or update their practices. And the fourth area, the fourth type of activity that we saw is predicting gains in student outcomes was observing, not observing someone else, but having someone observe you. So the teacher inviting someone to come in and observe them for specific purposes to get feedback. So saying, you know, I'm concerned, you know, when I'm facilitating discussions that I don't involve all students, could you come in and observe me and give me some feedback on what I'm doing well, and then maybe some suggestions. Or come in and observe me, you know, as I'm working with a particular group of students who are struggling, and I'm feeling like what I'm doing isn't working. So come in and observe me, and then tell me what you saw and give me feedback and help me think through it. And so those four practices, we like to think of them as CAMO C A M O, and thinking about a lot of times, like with camouflage, things are hidden. There's so many things you could do with a coach, so many things you could talk about with a peer, but putting a spotlight on these four things, conferencing, assessment, modeling, and observations are ones that I would want teachers to really think about and, and using the resources that they have available to them by meeting with talking with coaches or mentors or just trusted peers in their schools. So that's, that's kind of the first body of research that focuses on the work that Susan and I did, specifically with coaching.

Lindsay Persohn: 9:15

That, that acronym CAMO really does help us to think about the concrete examples you provided of, of how teachers can inform change in their classrooms. And and to do that in a way that I think allows teachers to think and be creative and to build community, because that's certainly something I think we've been been missing in a lot of places and education is that sense of community?

Laurie Elish-Piper: 9:41

Absolutely. And I think that, you know, for some folks, they might feel like if they're newer teachers or they're, you know, trying to implement practices that are new to them, it's okay to reach out to someone else because, you know, our colleagues appreciate that, that they that that someone values what we do, and I think it also opens the door to then say, you know, but you're really good at this, could you help me with this? Or, you know, I know that you implement this practice or this approach in your classroom and I've been thinking about wanting to do that, can you share with me? And so I think that, you know, a lot of times, Susan, and I would talk about coaches as really being trusted peers, who's, who are someone to think and problem solve with. And in our current situation, I really want to extend this to, you know, don't just say, well, we don't have a coach in our school, or I know in some schools that are up here in Illinois, where I am, they've repurposed their coaches this year, to be teachers, because with physical distancing, with face to face and online and hybrid models, sometimes being implemented all of those in a single school, that they've really had to, you know, leverage some of those professionals to take on different roles this year. But thinking about, you know, who is that trusted peer that you can go to, that you can talk through things with, and maybe one of the silver linings of a lot of our remote teaching is, it's a lot easier to observe someone, you could record it. It's a lot easier, you could just give them the link to your online synchronous class session, you know, that, that we can leverage the technology to do some of those things that might have been difficult to do with your teaching at the same time, and your classrooms are next to each other, and you can't, you know, walk over and see what your peer is doing. So maybe that's one silver lining that the pandemic is providing to us as educators is the access to technology that we can use in ways that maybe in the past, we hadn't considered.

Lindsay Persohn: 11:29

I think identifying those silver linings, any place we can find them is really important right now.

Laurie Elish-Piper: 11:35

Yeah, absolutely. I am a silver lining finder. And that's one of that's one of my, one of my responsibilities in life is I am an eternal optimist, and trying to find out what those positives are. Because it's challenging right now, for a lot of us for a lot of different reasons, some of them related to teaching and learning, and some of them just related to life. And so I think finding what those silver linings are, can be encouraging and help us get through some of the tougher days or help us feel like there might be better days ahead. The second area of research, I've done a good amount of research specifically in working with families, and specifically in working with families to support children's literacy progress, literacy engagement, literacy development. And as I reflect back on that body of research, a lot of what is coming to mind right now, focuses back to that initial idea that I shared about relationships, and thinking about building relationships with families. And so much of what we see is that teachers have maybe been prepared to think about working with families as an extra as something that they do when there's time, or if they have to, or if there's a problem. But I think that one of the one of the things that we're learning right now is, especially with families being so involved in a lot of remote and hybrid learning is we're seeing that families really are our partners, and educating children. And maybe it's not what any of us signed up for the current model that many of us are experiencing. But I think that whole idea of viewing, family engagement, family partnerships, not as an optional thing that we do on top of teaching and learning, but it's part of what we do in teaching and learning. I oftentimes describe it as you know, yes, we teach children, but those children are nested within their families and within their communities. And if we don't understand the families and the communities where our children come from, and we don't connect to them, and we don't respect them, and we don't identify and embrace and celebrate the assets that they bring to the learning situation, based on their families and their communities, we're really missing an opportunity to educate the whole child. And so some of my research indicated that a lot of teachers did not feel well prepared for engaging with families. And so I think that that's an area for professional development or an area for teachers to share with one another and to really think through what they can be doing to build those relationships with families to understand how to work with families, who are different than you as the teacher, who might come from a different racial or cultural or language background, might come from a different socio economic situation, might be a family structure that's different than what you're used to, and helping teachers understand that different does not mean deficient. That different just means different, and embracing that difference. And one of the things this is not scientific, but one of the things that I've been hearing on social media and in some of the networks of teachers that I interact with, is that a number of them are talking about how the technology has really allowed them to connect with families in ways that they never would have before. And so parents are saying like I can't get connected or the grandparents are saying how does this piece of technology work? Or, you know, they're, they're reaching out in ways that maybe they hadn't before because they have to. But I think for a lot of teachers it's been incredibly eye opening to see where children live, to see the spaces where they are, to see, I was just talking with a teacher yesterday, a middle school teacher who said, you know, I have kids who will be sitting there holding their infant and toddler siblings during class, because mom is working. And that's what they're doing. And she said, you know, seeing those children with different eyes and seeing them as more mature and responsible and just all that's placed upon them, but also seeing, you know, just the the reality of family situations. And you know, what opportunities does that allow us to identify. I'm also hearing, it's conference time around here and I'm hearing a lot of teachers talk about how they've had better attendance at family conferences than they ever have in the past. And so I think, again, that technology piece has been one that has made some of those things possible. A lot of our low income school districts have done Herculean work, to get devices and Wi Fi hotspots out to families. It's just been truly amazing to see what they have done to make that happen. And those kinds of technology connections then can be used to, to get to know families, and to build those relationships. I think also that with, at least initially, with many teachers teaching at home, I think it also allowed families and students to see teachers as human beings in ways that maybe hadn't happened before. I think a lot of times teachers believe that they need to be professionals, and they do. But by being a professional, it felt like they couldn't have a life or a family or responsibilities, or tough days, or, you know, any of those challenges that human beings all have. And I think that this experience has really allowed families to begin seeing teachers as humans and as partners, and as three dimensional beings who have good days and bad days and challenges and assets, and that, you know, we're all doing the best that we can, and that by working together, we can make one another better and we can enhance the quality of education for children, for students. And so I think that whole idea of looking at families from an asset based perspective, it's been written about a lot in the literature. But what does that mean? What does that look like? And I think that is an area where I really encourage teachers to think hard and to look at and to see what do your students families bring to the table? How do they spend time together? What are their hobbies? What are their funds of knowledge? If they speak a language other than English, you know, how can we use that as an asset to enhance the children's English language development? And, and really thinking about, you know, how can we use those assets that families and students have as building blocks, and as points of connection for our curriculum, and a lot of that goes back to that idea of building relationships? How do you know what those funds of knowledge are, and what those assets are, if you don't have a relationship, where people are comfortable enough to talk to you and say, you know, these are the ways that we spend time, these are our hobbies, these are the things that we do, these are the, you know, these are the traditions and the activities that are important in our family. If you don't have a relationship, people are not going to share that. And then if you don't have a relationship, and they don't share that you can't leverage it for enhancing the quality and the efficacy of the instruction that you provide. And so I think I feel like it just goes back to that idea of, you know, investing time and getting to know one another and really embracing teaching and learning as human relationships,

Lindsay Persohn: 18:35

What you're saying Laurie reminds me of several conversations that I've had through this podcast. Specifically, I talked with Pat Edwards a couple of weeks ago. And you know, so she had so much to say about families, and really what you're saying here getting to know kids and you know, where they come from, who they live with, what do they like, what are their families do? And you know, I think it really resonates with me also, because that idea of building a relationship has been so important in my teaching career. Also, you know, students will work harder when they know you care about them, or they know you know, something about them. And I think that that's just a fundamental idea that if we're not there, we've got to get back to it.

Laurie Elish-Piper: 19:19

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Lindsay Persohn: 19:21

So we've we have, you've touched on several challenges of education today and I know you are an eternal optimist, and so I'm hoping that your response to this next question will be will be powerful for teachers. Given the challenges of today's educational climate? What message do you want teachers to hear?

Laurie Elish-Piper: 19:42

I probably want them to hear a couple of messages. So I hope you'll I hope you'll humor me and let me share a couple or maybe even...

Lindsay Persohn: 19:48

Absolutely.

Laurie Elish-Piper: 19:49

One of them is that the work that teachers do is truly the backbone of our democratic society. It is the most fundamental endeavor that we have for preparing for and moving toward a positive future. And so I want to if teachers feel the weight of that on their shoulders, I want them to know that indeed that is true, but that what they do matters. And what they do in their classrooms with their individual students, is life changing. And it is essential for us as a democratic nation. I also want them to know that with that heavy responsibility, they need to take care of themselves. They need to engage in self care, whatever that looks like, they need to unplug from their computers, they need to do things that they enjoy, they need to, you know, spend time on on hobbies or exercising or, you know, spending time with with their own family members, whatever recharges and re energizes them. It makes me think of a classic little book that I just love, called The Energy to Teach by Donald Graves and he talks about how if we don't have the energy to teach them, we can't do what we need to do to support our students. And so we need to take care of ourselves. And I think that is difficult right now, because a lot of the activities that many of us find recharging, you know, going out and you know, going to a going to a movie or a play or a concert or you know, a festival or you know, traveling or you know, a family reunion, all of these things that for many of us are the ways that we recharge, and the ways that we then come back with energy to teach, are not available to us. And so figuring out what we can do, whether that's, you know, taking walks, or whether that's you know, working out in the garden, or whether that's reading for enjoyment, or whether that's baking, or whether that's you know, doing crafts, or whether that's woodworking or whether that's, you know, I don't know what it is, but find out what it is and take care of yourselves. Because if you don't take care of yourself, so you won't be able to take care of your students and they need you. They need you. So please, I think that's incredibly important. And then probably the third one is just keep looking for and finding the joy in teaching and learning and specifically the joy in literacy, and making sure that that is a focal point of your teaching with your students, especially in this challenging time to you know, enjoy and laugh and share a book. And, you know, just last week, one of my colleagues sent me an email that had a link to just this little video that was about something we had been discussing earlier in the weekend. It was so funny, that I laughed so loud that my husband came in and he said, What is so funny? And I said, Well, you know, my colleague Paul just sent me this video about something we were discussing. And it made me laugh and it felt so good to laugh. And I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard. So I think finding that joy and being silly with our students and, you know, sharing fun books and making sure that while we're focusing on those essential and enduring instructional activities and outcomes for students, that within those we're weaving that idea of joy and making teaching and learning fun. So many children are missing what school used to be, they miss their friends, they miss recess, they miss, you know, the hands on art class where they, you know, really found themselves, they miss their teachers. They miss the special activities that go on in our schools, you know, the you know, for older students, they miss homecoming, they you know, younger kids, they miss if there's a, you know, a costume parade. You know, they're they're missing those kinds of things. So how can we provide that joy for students in whatever modality we're teaching right now. But that also refuels us and gives us that energy to teach and to move forward to do that really important work of supporting all of our students.

Lindsay Persohn: 23:39

And again, what you're saying rings so true to me, the because for me, building relationships has often come out of those joyful, silly kinds of moments where you can just sit back and laugh with the kids in your classroom. And I think you're right, we've been a little low on laughter these last few months. So I can agree totally that nothing recharges you quite like those joy filled moments. So Laurie, you you are an absolute joy to speak with. And I thank you so much for your time today and also for your contributions to the field of education. So thank you for being a guest here on Classroom Caffeine.

Laurie Elish-Piper: 24:19

It's been my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Lindsay Persohn: 24:22

Dr. Laurie Elish-Piper has been named a Distinguished Engagement Professor and a Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Northern Illinois University. She served as the director of the Jerry L. John's Literacy Clinic for 15 years and as Co Director for the Center for the Interdisciplinary Study of Language and Literacy for seven years. Laurie has provided leadership to professional organizations, including her service as Chair and Treasurer of the Illinois Association of Dean's and Public Colleges of Education, the President of the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers, and as a member of the International Literacy Association Board of Directors. Her research focuses on literacy leadership, literacy coaching, teacher professional development, literacy assessment, family engagement, and struggling readers. She's co authored 12 books and more than 80 articles and chapters, including articles in The Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Literacy Research and Instruction, the Journal of Literacy and Language Education, The Reading Teacher, and the Journal of Reading Education. Before starting her career in higher education, she was an elementary teacher and middle school language arts reading teacher and an educational therapist for patients on a children's unit in an acute care psychiatric hospital. Laurie is currently Dean of the College of Education at Northern Illinois University. For the good of all students, good research should inform good practice and vice versa. Listeners are invited to respond to our guests, learn more about our guests research, and suggest a topic for an upcoming episode through this podcast website at ClassroomCaffeine.com. If you've learned something today, or just enjoyed listening, please subscribe to this podcast. I raise my mug to you teachers. Thanks for joining me.