Diane Lapp Honored for a Lifetime of Literacy Leadership

Diane Lapp is delighted to be the recipient of the William S. Gray Citation of Merit — the highest individual honor awarded by the International Literacy Association.
 
But in many ways, the San Diego State University professor emerita and Albert W. Johnson Distinguished Professor feels like she has received the honor many times over.
 
“I'm most proud when students write to me and say ‘you supported me’ or that I gave them something — socially, emotionally or some knowledge — that made them the person or educator they are,” says Lapp. “Those are my own many lifetime achievement awards.” 
 
From time to time, Lapp hears from students she taught, telling her how they’ve since become teachers, principals, superintendents, reading specialists or university professors. Recently, she received a letter and a phone call from Steven, who she taught as a young educator in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He was excited to tell Lapp about a promotion he’d received at his company.
 
“All those responses are so important to me,” she said. “It’s the human element and having students say, ‘Hey, what you said or did mattered.’”

Born to Teach

A native of Warren, Ohio, Lapp knew she wanted to be a teacher from a young age. She fondly recalls playing school with her siblings and neighborhood friends and teaching lessons on the front porch. She was always the teacher and always interested in language.
 
As a young adult, she taught second, third and fifth grades in Kalamazoo and Oxford, Ohio. Seeking to become a strong teacher of reading, she returned to graduate school. That decision led Lapp to pursue a career in academia, eventually earning a tenured position in Boston University’s Division of Reading and Language Development. 

Lapp was at BU when she was invited by professor Peggy Hawley to come to SDSU as a visiting guest lecturer along with her longtime research collaborator James Flood. Hawley, who was launching the Joint Ph.D. Program in Education with Claremont Graduate University at the time, wanted Lapp and Flood to design a literacy strand for the program.
 
Before long, Lapp and Flood had both moved west to join the SDSU Teacher Education faculty.
 
“All my friends in Boston and around the country were saying, ‘How could you leave a tenured position at Boston University?’ Lapp says, smiling. “I said, ‘Have you ever seen San Diego?’”

Impressive Legacy

Lapp’s impact as a teacher educator and literacy researcher at SDSU has been immense, publishing widely on instruction, assessment, and literacy-related issues. She has won a litany of awards, including being inducted into the International Reading Hall of Fame in 2005 and receiving the SDSU Alumni Distinguished Faculty Award in 2013. Lapp also served as chair of the Literacy Research Panel for the International Literacy Association.
 
At the center of Lapp’s work has been a belief that there is no one best path to teach a child to read. 
 
“Children come to school with different amounts of knowledge about language and letters, and writing and reading,” she explains. “So begin where they are. Whether they’re little children learning to read or my doctoral students writing a dissertation, it's all about the student and what they're bringing to the learning task.”
 
Added Nancy Frey, professor in SDSU’s Department of Educational Leadership and a frequent co-author of Lapp’s: “Diane has had a unique skill in surveying the field to understand what is on the cutting edge. She and her contemporaries pioneered content area reading research for struggling middle and high school readers at a time when few considered it a crucial element for adolescent success. She was an early and ongoing champion of equity in literacy for young children, and for the systematic development of phonics instruction for emergent readers.”
 
Lapp is technically retired now, but you’d never know it. She still works to empower struggling readers as an instructional coach at the Health Sciences High and Middle College in San Diego where she and Douglas Fisher, professor and chair in SDSU’s Department of Educational Leadership, instituted a Literacy Lab to support struggling adolescent readers developing their reading abilities.
 
At SDSU, Lapp continues to teach courses as a lecturer in the Department of Educational Leadership. As she has for the past 44 years, Lapp administers a summer literacy conference for teacher education’s master’s students that she started; this year there were nearly 200 attendees. 
 
And, of course, she continues to publish and study issues related to literacy learning.
 
“I've had so many wonderful colleagues at San Diego State,” Lapp says. “It's always been so teacher centered and literacy centered. They know how to teach teachers to teach reading here and they care if learners of all ages become strong readers.”