Dr. Diane Lapp talks with us about using assessment to drive instruction, building meaningful relationships with students, and purposeful teaching. Diane is known for her work regarding issues related to the planning and assessment of intentional and equitable instruction and learning, especially for students in low performing schools in urban areas. Dr. Lapp is a Distinguished Professor of Education at San Diego State University.
To cite this episode:
Persohn, L. (Host). (2021, Jan. 5). A conversation with Diane Lapp. (Season 1, No.9 ) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/54EA-2362-CA4F-AF44-E75F-7
Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
Dr. Diane Lapp talks with us about using assessment to drive instruction, building meaningful relationships with students, and purposeful teaching. Diane is known for her work regarding issues related to the planning and assessment of intentional and equitable instruction and learning, especially for students in low performing schools in urban areas. Dr. Lapp is a Distinguished Professor of Education at San Diego State University.
To cite this episode:
Persohn, L. (Host). (2021, Jan. 5). A conversation with Diane Lapp. (Season 1, No.9 ) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/54EA-2362-CA4F-AF44-E75F-7
Connect with Classroom Caffeine at www.classroomcaffeine.com or on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
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. Diane Lapp talks with us about using assessment to drive instruction, building meaningful relationships with students, and purposeful teaching. Diane is known for her work regarding issues related to the planning and assessment of intentional and equitable instruction and learning, especially for students in low performing schools in urban areas. Dr. Lapp is a Distinguished Professor of Education at San Diego State University. 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. Hi, Diane, thank you for joining me, and welcome to the show.
Diane Lapp:Thanks for inviting me. It's great to be here with you. Diane, from your own experiences in education, will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now? Yes, two in particular. To begin with, I've taught in elementary, middle and high schools. In fact, currently, in addition to being a faculty member at San Diego State, I am an instructional coach and a teacher at Health Sciences High and Middle College, which is a school that some of my colleagues and I started about about 14 years ago. And we started that school because we wanted to put into practice all of the things that we were saying should happen in teacher preparation courses. Well, one of the things that we often do in that school is, we all have teaching credentials. And so we often teach and work in the classrooms. And as I said, right now, I'm teaching 12th grade English again. But while we're working with some of these high school students, a couple of years ago, I noticed that they struggled to comprehend their texts. And these were students who also exhibited disruptive behaviors in their classrooms. So in an attempt to understand why this was occurring, two of my colleagues, Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey, and I, admitted because they were the people who started this, we all started this school together administered a wide range of assessments, which included ones that measure phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. And it was interesting, because what we found, presents quite a picture of these kids, these children. So over 60% of these students failed to demonstrate mastery on constrained skills, such as phonemic awareness and phonics, you know, which was interfering with their grade level performance across all of the disciplines. We realized that their inability to read was a factor affecting their in-class performance because they of course, would rather disrupt the class than let their peers know that they couldn't read the materials for the class. So once we taught them, the foundational skills, their fluency was no longer compromised. Their knowledge of letters and sound supported their quick and efficient decoding. And this enabled their automaticity and limited they're pausing that they were doing to guess, which was, you know, consequently, disrupting their comprehension. The best thing that happened was, they became confident that they could read, because they were comprehending, they stopped looking around at the text to you, you know, to use any illustrations that help them guess at the meaning. Instead, they were viewing themselves as readers. And so what we found in working with these students, was a little bit counter to the popular belief that adolescents don't need early literacy skills, but rather all that needs to happen is that they be motivated with wonderful books or some kind of disciplinary approaches to reading their, their texts. And now while I'm not discounting any of that, because I believe you have to motivation keeps you reading. We also saw that this group of adolescents improved as spellers and writers as they gained insights and confidence about letter sound relationships, letter patterns within words. So this supported my belief that teachers must continue to use formative assessment to assess students and provide the instruction that's needed, even when it seems that that instruction might be counterproductive to beliefs. And in this case, the belief that adolescents don't need to be taught phonics skills, they just need to be motivated to read. One doesn't discount the other, I can have all the motivation in the world to read a book in German but if I can't decode it, I can't I can't read it. So I think teachers might, I guess, what this experience and then a second one says to me that teachers must be forthright and transparent in explaining also, to students what and why they are providing, why they're providing the instruction that they are. We were very transparent with these adolescents in saying that, we know why you're struggling. So let's work together to eliminate this, which happened for these children. And they became readers, scholars, and writers with confidence that they could do do it. So once they understood that they needed these foundational skills, and they acquired them, they gained literacy independence, I think what you're hinting at here is that it's all pieces in a puzzle, right? And we have to identify which pieces are missing so that we can see that big picture of what it means to read, to really read and understand and read for authentic purposes outside of school. Yes, I agree with you. And I just think that if we ask ourselves, what are all the skills that I have? And do these students have these skills? And if they can't decode, I can't go any farther, even if they love to listen to books. So that experience that happened to me now at our high school was something similar, because you asked me for two big things that affected me as a teacher. Lots of them have affected me. But about 20 years ago, I was on a sabbatical. I had a sabbatical coming up and I planned, I did a lot of work throughout my career with a person named James Flood, who is deceased way too early. And he and I had planned that during my sabbatical. We were going to go into some schools of teachers that had worked with us and, you know, watch kids read and think about that. Well, that was just about the time again, that people were talking about if there was a need to teach was about that the time of the Whole Language, the same debate we're in right now. What is the View of Reading? So I found myself back in a first grade classroom, in a low performing, economically low income school, where children hadn't come to school with a strong school language base, I want to be very careful about saying a language base because, excuse me, all these children had a language base. It wasn't it just wasn't tightly school related base. And so what I ended up doing that year was, I worked with a group of first graders who were way below the teacher believe they should be. And I also taught, worked with them, doing things like reading wonderful literature to them, but then teaching them the foundational skills that they needed in order to be able to read and write literature. And so those two experience confirms what I've just shared with you. We as teachers must go in with an idea of how we believe children learn to read and continue to read. But we must be very flexible, so that as we assess them, we are able to provide them the instruction that they need in order to grow as readers. So I think that my whole career has, you know, been built around this concept of assessment to instruction. Let go of your emphatic beliefs. Be open to growing and changing yourself through what you see children need. Diane, you've done a lot of really influential work in your career. And so I'm hoping that you will just share a few ideas with us that you'd like your teachers to know about your research? Well, I think, thank you for saying that. I, I've always loved this profession. That's why I can't hardly leave it. Everybody always says to me, are you ever going to retire? And I say, well, to do what what is it that I'm going to retire to do I still have?
Lindsay Persohn:What does that mean?
Diane Lapp:What does that mean? I just, I can't imagine not being with kids and teaching something and, and also being with my colleagues and learning from them. There are many things that I've given up.
Lindsay Persohn:But when you love what you do, it doesn't feel like work does it?
Diane Lapp:It doesn't, it doesn't. So being around kids and teachers and teaching, I think is now I say now it's my hobby. So my work, as you and I've just said, has always So Diane, how do you think we get there? I think that focused on teaching every child to read, which involves that they be able to decode with fluency, that they can comprehend, that they can talk about what they're reading, that they can make sense of a lot of different kinds of texts. So regardless of the grade level, or the discipline, I'm just hoping that the children have teachers who make the intention of a text or a lesson obvious to them, and then support them in developing their reading, writing, listening, speaking proficiencies, you know, so that they can learn to deeply think about it, to analyze it. You know, I, in the last 10 years, I did a lot of work in close reading, and help children be able to and with the seniors I'm working with right now, the one thing I'm trying to teach them because they're they've all become very fluent readers. I want them to become very analytical thinkers, and so so that they can evaluate a text, what's being presented to them? why it's being presented to them? What's their reaction to that? Why is there their reaction? So I guess I've focused expand a little bit from just working with students on becoming very skilled readers to becoming very skilled thinkers, thinkers who aren't scared the question and thinkers who respond in ways that support next step actions, you know, so just developing what.... I know that right after the election, it's been quite a quite a learning curve for me to learn how to teach via Zoom, but I always try to start, I believe you have to have some things to kids get accustomed to. So I always start with a Padlet. And my questions I, as I've looked from from August to now, which, you know, now we are mid November, my questions to them have asked for deeper and deeper analysis of what they're hearing what they're reading, and oh, my heavens, I just am thrilled that they don't just now give an opinion. They're given an analysis of something. And they know what they believe, in order to be able to do that. And I think that as teachers and teachers of reading, if we can teach children to read, and then how to have be able to analyze what they are reading, from their perspective and the perspective of the author, you know, what a gift we've given them, because we've developed their thinking, and promoted the fact that they don't end up in arguments, but they can end up in a conversation that validates their analysis, their thinking, and invites people that they are speaking with to offer a variety of opinions. That's how our knowledge grows. So I think that those are the kinds of things that I hope my any work I've done, have encouraged teachers to do to go in with that kind of flexibility to have conversations with their learner, their students and hear their voices have a match. You know, teachers have pretty good clarity on what they want to teach. But then is there a match between what they are teaching and what they believe they're teaching and the growth that they have projected for the students that are working with? And this isn't just when we're working with elementary, middle and high school students. I think about this when I'm teaching methods courses or graduate courses that are Oh, are they learning anything about this from being with me? I'm what am I learning from them? So. oftentimes in schools, we focus so much on the idea of building skilled readers, that the idea of becoming skilled and critical thinkers eludes us somehow, whether it's time, energy, resources, you know, whatever the case may be, how do we get there? How do we get from building skilled readers to building skilled thinkers? Well, I think that I can only tell you this from the work that I've done is that once they are pretty fluent readers, or even as they're growing into being very fluent readers, I think, pausing to ask them questions, that invite them to analyze the information that's being shared with them, why it's being shared with them, and sometimes going in investigating the validity, or the veracity of what's being shared with them all starts to build a pattern for not just arguing a point but being able to validate a point, understand a point, and expand your own points. And I think that can be taught. And I think it's, you know, right now, my students, we just, our first book that we read this year was A Raisin in the Sun, the play. And now we're on the Curious Incident of the Dog in the NightTime. And there's so much opportunity for analysis in that book. But I'm just thinking that a teacher has to know have clarity about what my intention is to teach those students, and then ask myself is my instruction matching that then asked myself, if my students aren't getting it or growing, how do I revise my instruction? So you go back and look at your intentions, the clarity of your intentions, and is there an instructional match? And is there a learning growth? So those three things should all be aligned all the time, clarity of your intention, your instructional implementation, and the growth of your students. And it's, you know, it takes a lifetime of learning to have that happen also, because I think that I'm very excited to see who as I said to you, when we start talking who our next commissioner of education is going to be, because I hope it's somebody who is an educator, a lifelong educator, and who really understands the the education as a profession, because I think that, like any profession, teachers have to realize that in order to become a powerful teacher, it's a lifelong professional development process. Teachers are often criticized, because they don't know this, or they don't know that, well, teachers must know a lot about their subjects, they have to know lots about how their students learn, they have to know lots about how to teach them. So to me, this means that students in class are taught, supported, and encouraged in their learning, which is evidenced by their growing knowledge skill development, and as we've just said, their independence. But I think most teacher credentialing programs, and I'm going to stick to literacy, because I think if you can read the whole world can be handled okay, by you, so, in teacher credential programs, I think most teachers who are getting a K-8 certification, usually only complete one or two reading language arts methods courses. And I think that I know from teaching also secondary methods that many states don't even require one course in this. So regardless of the grade one is interested in eventually teaching, or are there, we're often all in the same preparatory classes, there isn't something different for if I want to be an early literacy, pre K, K, for a second grade teacher, then there might be if I want to be sixth or seventh grade, unless I'm in a middle school, you know, secondary credential. So you get these courses, and they're very few. And then off, you go to your teaching jobs. And sometimes the professional development is just whatever the principal figures is needed at that time. And it might not have anything to do with the instruction that you are attempting to provide students. And so I think that teachers have to know that they have to continue to gain knowledge about their practice, and that the whole world should stop criticizing a second year teacher because he or she can't handle all the differences of instruction going on in the or, different needs that are being evidenced in a classroom. So I just want to encourage teachers to keep growing, keep taking courses, keep listening to your podcasts, listen to something that's being presented by somebody they may not totally agree with, because they might get a different idea. And always pushing our thinking and learning the latest is, I think it's a challenge. But it's certainly a worthwhile mission as we continue to grow as professionals. It's so unfortunate that teachers have had a bit of their professionalism stolen over the last few decades. You know, I wonder after this pandemic, and people have had, parents have to assume some of the roles of the teacher or the teacher support, if everybody will understand that every other profession rests on the heels of education. And that each year, each year, a teacher is confronted with a variety of students. In high school, sometimes it's each semester. And each of those children or students have a variety of needs, they have learning strengths and learning needs, many of them are multilingual learners. And because of previous experiences, they learn at different rates, they have different language basis. So in order for teachers to address these learning differences and needs, they must understand again, how children learn how they develop, what they do about children who are not just getting it at the same pace that they had intended. So how, what do they do? And just think, when we say to a teacher, okay, well then go into small group instruction and also, some of your students might need one on one instruction, what's the teacher going to do with those other 35 kids, you have to learn what to do with them. And that doesn't happen in one methods course. So I think Teacher Education totally needs revamped in that we spend much more time in practicums, addressing some of those issues, learning information, implementing it, evaluating our styles, being in a program where we get continual feedback. And I know some states like California have developed programs for teachers after they get their teaching credential, but I think they should be extended. And I think that, like many professions, our continual growth needs to happen in the classrooms of those teachers. And it needs to be focused primarily around instruction. Because instruction is so universal, that if I'm providing you with good instruction, I'm caring about your social emotional learning. And I know right now everybody's talking about how can I develop social emotional learning, you can develop it by providing them instruction, that gives them the security that they can read, that they can analyze that they can solve a math problem more, I believe that I can, I can, and I will. So those are the kinds of things just never give up on your professional development. I think powerful principals should ask teachers, what do you think you need to grow in this year? And then I think we need to differentiate professional development. So if I'm the first grade teacher, and I say, you know, I really don't know how to do small group reading instruction. Because I see that some of my children need one on one, that's what you're, that's what should happen for you. If I'm with a teacher who says, I'm pretty good at teaching reading, but, you know, I don't know how to inner weave anything about civics or anything about geography, or I need a little bit of help on math. Let me design some professional development to accommodate you. So that on professional development day, we're getting the kind of instruction we think we need. And it really would help to, to carry that torch on. And I think to reinvigorate teachers, if they were able to say here is a goal I've identified and then their administrator say, and here's some resources I have for you. What a different world we would live in, if that were the case. And you know, Lindsay, I'm thinking that maybe that's going to be one of the positive outcomes of all of us being quarantined, because so many publishers, and professional organizations have developed podcasts, have developed little seminars, so that 1000s of dollars aren't getting sent to spend to send one teacher to a conference. But instead signing teachers up for a coffee break, where they really listen to something, or a book club where they get a book and join other teachers in talking about an issue. I think that that's going to be one of our big breakthroughs in education. That is my sincere hope is that we will get to a point where teachers can recover a bit of autonomy in their own thinking and learning. Because I know certainly here I am in the state of Florida, I feel as though throughout my teaching career, which has been around 20 years already, it's been very sad to me to see what has happened and and how I see so many people go from I want to help kids, I want to teach them how to read, I want to change the world to I just can't do this anymore. I know.
Lindsay Persohn:And I I see that happen way too often, particularly for people who have talent and passion and knowledge. And it's gone somehow.
Diane Lapp:One of the exciting things that and I guess this is why I'm hoping that this next wave offers these podcasts and experiences like this, because during this pandemic, the Literacy Today magazine of the International Literacy Association, asked me and one of my colleagues to do a series of columns for them. And so what we decided to do was when we said something about instruction, we interviewed a teacher and had the teacher show. So I think that whatever we're telling, we should be showing, just like we do with children. So when I'm saying to you, I think teachers are asking, How do I, you know, manage a classroom that has now I've got to go into small groups, and then I still need one child who needs 10 more hours of something, how do I manage that? Then you should say, okay, here's a series of videos to look at. That's when we have good professional development. And that reminds me very much of a conversation I had with Laurie Elish Piper recently, and some of the things she said about professional development and really sounds like you're saying some of the affordances of the pandemic. Thankfully, we can frame a few things that way. And think about the ability to record our own teaching, we're already on a screen, record something that we're really doing well and then share it with colleagues, or if we need support in an area, you know, colleagues can drop in via video when I think that was a much more difficult, logistically, you know, it was a more difficult kind of situation when everybody was in their own classrooms with their their own students for hours and hours. So yeah, there there could be some positive things here. Diane, given the challenges of today's climate, and we've touched on quite a few of them already what message do you want teachers to hear? To keep changing with the times. Keep a strong foundation, but never stop your own learning? Because if you do, you will, I believe you will never be able to meet the needs of the students that you are planning to teach. I feel when you were saying for all of those fabulous teachers who retired, because they were overwhelmed by having to learn how to teach via Zoom. And I feel the same thing. This has been quite a challenge for me, but it's learnable. It's just like anything else. You have to learn how to Zoom and have breakout rooms and have Padlets and you know, all of the things that we've learned to do to accommodate children, because good teachers have to stay involved. And one of the best pieces of advice that I have also for teachers and administrators and I've learned this by doing this recently, is partner was somebody who has different skills than you. To administrators, take a teacher with years of knowledge like I have about how you teach somebody to read and pair them with a new teacher who wants to learn all of that, but they also know how to Zoom, make a Padlet, do breakout rooms, because teachers with experience, like myself can learn all that. And that new young teacher can gain from all the things that we know. Partner for professional development. Partner for situations. Be prepared. Don't think you throw your hands up in the air and say there's no solution. There's lots of solutions.
Lindsay Persohn:And you know that that reminds me, you know, facing challenges in education and really in life, I'd say, but I think I think as teachers, we tend to be, we tend to be very hard on ourselves, and we tend to expect perfection. And I think maybe if we just ease up on that a little bit and realize that progress gets us there to that it doesn't have to be perfect the first time out of the gate, I think that that can also help in some of those situations where we're learning new technologies are learning new ways of teaching something. We can't expect perfection the first time.
Diane Lapp:No, you know, we care so much about the social emotional responses of our children, our students, and you're absolutely right. Take care of yourselves. Have a during this pandemic, have a beginning and ending time to your day, have a good dinner, call friend, Zoom a friend. So all of those things, because those are challenges for us, just learning how to set up the Zoom. And but I'll tell you, once you do it, it's like anything else you think, that wasn't so hard. I learned how to do that. So I guess my final thought is never stop learning. Never stop being curious, asking questions, laughing at yourself, laughing with your friends, and always have your eye on the behaviors of your students and plan for their growth. Because they are going to be the next voters. As we saw, oh my heavens, I was so happy all those new young voters came out and voted. I think we had some old, old, old new voters. I do too. I do too. Yeah. It's all about analysis. They were all analyzing what they were hearing and thinking. And literacy truly is a very fundamental social justice issue. If we don't have the literacy skills, you can't be that participant in a democratic society. Listen and learn.
Lindsay Persohn:Well, Diane, you are truly a pleasure to speak with. I can't thank you enough for your time today and for sharing your words and your thoughts with teachers.
Diane Lapp:Thank you.
Lindsay Persohn:Thank you. Dr. Diane Lapp is known for her research and instruction regarding issues related to the planning and assessment of intentional and equitable instruction and learning, especially for students in low performing urban areas. Diane has authored co authored and edited numerous articles, columns, blogs, texts, handbooks and children's materials on instruction assessment and literacy related issues. She has published in many journals including Literacy Today, Reading Research Quarterly, The Reading Teacher, Elementary School Journal, the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. She has conducted many professional trainings addressing topics related to literacy learning and instruction, differentiated learning, purposeful instruction and assessment, the gradual release of instructional responsibility, close reading, classroom collaboration and conversation, balanced literacy and writing across the curriculum. Her many educational awards include being named the Distinguished Research Lecturer from San Diego State University's Graduate Division of Research, where she was granted the title of Distinguished Professor of Education. She has been awarded the International Literacy Association's Outstanding Teacher Educator of the Year Award, and is a recipient of the ILA's John Manning Award for her work in public schools. Dr. Lapp is an elected member of both the California and the International Reading Halls of Fame and is currently the president of the International Reading Hall of Fame. Dr. Lapp is a Distinguished Professor of education at San Diego State 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.