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[LISTEN AGAIN] Language Variations and Teaching Reading with Julie Washington

• Episode 151

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Episode 151 (from June 23, 2023) 

How Language Variations Shape Literacy

Language and reading go hand in hand—but how can we leverage students’ linguistic strengths to support literacy?

In this episode, Julie Washington, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in the intersection of language and literacy, breaks down the power of language variations, like African American English, and how understanding them can transform how we teach reading.

Key Takeaways:

✅ Language variations are a strength, not a barrier
✅ Students need to navigate both their home dialect and academic language
✅ Educators must set high expectations while embracing linguistic diversity

Julie shares research-backed insights and practical strategies to help educators create inclusive, effective literacy instruction. Tune in and learn how to make a real impact!

Resources


We answer your questions about teaching reading in The Literacy 50-A Q&A Handbook for Teachers: Real-World Answers to Questions About Reading That Keep You Up at Night.

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Lori:

We read the article Teaching Reading to African American Children when Home and School Language Differ and immediately emailed Julie Washington to podcast about it.

Melissa:

I was super nervous to email Julie Washington because I am just such a fan of all of her work and I mean she speaks and writes so powerfully and helps us learn different ways to teach students who speak variations of English. But I am so glad she said yes to talking with us Me too.

Lori:

You were so excited. This month we are talking about supporting all readers. There are so many connections to make between multilingual learners, learners with language variations and how to best teach reading for all students. Let's dive in. Welcome teacher friend. I'm Lori and I'm Melissa. We are two literacy educators in Baltimore.

Melissa:

We want the best for all kids and we know you do too, our district recently adopted a new literacy curriculum, which meant a lot of change for everyone, lori and I can't wait to keep learning about literacy with you today.

Lori:

Hi everyone. Welcome to Melissa and Lori Love Literacy Literacy Podcast. Today we are so excited because we have a guest who we've been looking forward to for quite some time now.

Melissa:

Yeah, we're here with Julie Washington, so we're so excited. She is a professor at the University of California Irvine and she is a professor at the University of California Irvine and she focuses her work on the intersection of language literacy and poverty in African-American children, the impact of cultural dialects on early literacy skills, language development and disorders. Yeah so, julie, welcome to the podcast.

Julie Washington:

Hey, how are you? It's nice to finally meet you two and to talk to you about anything and everything.

Melissa:

So you wrote a great article with Mark Seidenberg Teaching Reading to African American Children. I don't know now it feels like it was probably a little while ago, but we actually had a podcast where we talked to Mitchell Brookens about that article and it was a great conversation, Mitchell Brookins about that article and it was a great conversation. So we were excited to like have an actual conversation with you about it. But I'm wondering, like just to start the conversation, where do we start? Like what do we need to know about teaching reading to African American children? And I can imagine some people might say like, well, don't we just teach all children the same way to read? Like there's this science now that says we teach everyone learns how to read the same way. So I'm really interested to hear your take on like the differences, especially around language.

Julie Washington:

Yeah, it's really interesting because, with the focus on the science of reading, there is this sort of yeah, well, we know the science of reading and we just teach it to all children and then children will learn to read. And so what we're saying is you know, there's that conversation on the one side, and we've given up the idea. With the science of reading, it appears that differentiated instruction is still important, and so, no matter what you're teaching children, instruction has to be differentiated. So you may be teaching them, though, all of the same skills, but how the skills are taught is the issue, and that's something I think we kind of overlook. So, yes, the science of reading applies to all children, regardless of their language, background and race, ethnicity. Yes, I'm saying that out loud here, but how we get to teaching with more success and fidelity with children has to take into account the differences that they bring to reading instruction.

Julie Washington:

If there was a one-size-fits-all way to teach reading, we would know it by now. There has never been, there will never be, and the science of reading is not that it will never be, that there's no magic bullet, one-size-fits-all approach to reading, but we have a science of reading that tells us in order for children to successfully learn to read. These are the skills, the abilities that they need to have and that teachers need to be imparting. And so we do know that, and that's great. It's not like something that we just discovered. It is a history of reading research that's come together to help us see that there are some skills like phonemic and phonological awareness, vocabulary all of these things that we need to teach in order for children to be good readers. And so then that brings us to kids who have language variation, right. So we know that when we teach reading, morphology and morphological awareness are really important, for example. So what happens when you have a group of kids who delete morphemes? Do you just teach them exactly the same way you teach everybody else?

Melissa:

Can you give us an example of that, Julie?

Julie Washington:

It's so true. So some of the major features of African-American English impact morphology, and so, for example, if you are an African-American speaker, you can delete the past tense ed marker from words so you can say he jumped over the fence. Instead of he jumped over the fence, you can say he jumped over the fence. Instead of he jumped over the fence, you can say he jumped over the fence. Instead of he jumps over the fence, you can say he jumping over the fence. And delete the is. You can delete all the S's third person singular plural possessive past tense E-D.

Julie Washington:

All of those are variably included in African-American English. All of those are variably included in African-American English. So if you're a teacher who's teaching reading and you get to morphology, which impacts not only spelling, writing, reading, but meaning, do you not need to spend more time on those than you would with a child, for whom they are always included? And so that's what we're saying here is that when you and you know I study African-American children, we found very similar needs for children who speak other dialects also, and so you know what we were trying to point out in that article is yes, these children absolutely can learn to read. Yes, they are struggling to learn to read. Yes, we have a part in how to teach reading and improve the outcomes for these students. We have a lot of science that tells us what we need to do. That tells us what we need to do, and so the question is how do we?

Lori:

apply what we know differently for different populations. Yeah, what stands out to me is that it uplifts our learners as looking at their strengths and looking at like from a strength-based approach, rather than thinking of it as something that is a negative thing. Right, it's using the oral language to help support this idea of teaching the general American English. Right, like as it's written and things like that, but then also really respecting the African-American English. Do you think that that is a good take on that? It is.

Julie Washington:

And it's something we really want to encourage, because when we think about teaching reading to African-American children, when African-American children who speak African-American English not all do but when African-American children who speak African-American English show up at school, they are already experts in their community's language system.

Julie Washington:

They know how it works, they know when it's correct, they know when somebody's not doing it right, and they get to school and, instead of building on this expertise that students have, we try to squash what they're doing and get them to make this switch, and the reality is, in asking children to make a switch, we're telling them to forego what they already know, because now that doesn't matter and we need to teach you something else, and that's. I think that's a real problem for us and maybe may have contributed to some of the difficulty we see students continue to have. You know, I've been saying recently that Louisa Motz said that teaching reading is rocket science, and so, as a teacher, how in the world do we expect children to learn rocket science using a language system that they don't know? And so instead we can do exactly what you said, laurie affirm what they know, support their expertise and teach them to read by integrating that into our instruction like that's wrong, right?

Melissa:

however, yes, you know, like I, you know, jumped, jump instead of jumped. And they hear it's wrong, but then they go home and that's how their mom says it, their dad their, grandma, everybody yeah that's like, what? Like? How confusing is that for a child to hear it's wrong when everyone in their life is saying it and that's what they know? I can just imagine they they walk away thinking that I don't get it.

Julie Washington:

And then we see later, like at the other end, when one of the most probably illuminating experiences I've had related to this is actually talking to college students who you know. I go into this class every year and talk to the students about African American English in reading and what the conversations that I've had with these students have been both important and heartbreaking. So the first student who ever responded when I did this said to me I didn't know the way that I talked was a real thing. I thought it was just wrong. And so then we had this long conversation about why did you think that? Because my teachers told me that.

Julie Washington:

And then the other students who were African-American jumping in and saying you know, I had that experience too. My teacher used to put a pencil between my teeth and tell me to say these words correctly. And you know, every time I go back to this class and I'm doing it again in April, and I'm always happy to do it I'm going back to this class again, and every time I go I have these conversations with students about how their use of language was ridiculed, was taught to them that it's incorrect. So now, as adults, they're trying to think about who they are and the language they use and their resources are so tied up in trying to make sure they're doing it right that they're not contributing and that is a travesty and it's so sad.

Melissa:

Julie, can I ask you a question? This might be slightly controversial, I don't even know, but I feel like I've heard from African American colleagues that even within the African American community there can be some pushback against African-American English Like even like they don't want to acknowledge that it's legitimate in a way.

Julie Washington:

The most pushback I get is from the African-American community, because for us, this is not just an intellectual issue. This is not just an intellectual issue. It's not just a research issue. This is our lives, and one of the things we know is that. You know, we talk about dialects as being high prestige or low prestige, and a low prestige variety is one where, when people hear you speak it, they think negative things about you as a speaker. And African-American English is low prestige. And so, as a community, we know that if you are not speaking general American English, you are very unlikely to get that job, to be admitted to that college class, to be respected by your peers, and so it has real life consequences for us. And so our parents taught us that you can't use this linguistic system. You can't do this, and so you know my own, my mother she was a stickler for it. She's like you know, you need to speak the English, which I do not, but I can speak general American English, and African-American English was not allowed in our home. We were taught that it was incorrect, and her conversation was that if you want to succeed in this country, in this world, you have to be able to use standard English, and so we all have that history, and we know that, no matter what I say, no matter what anybody says researchers I actually said this to someone at a conference. He talked about how the esteem that African American English is, with which it's held, has changed, and so it's no longer this really low prestige dialect, and I said that's not true. The fact that it's popular to study is a completely different issue. Its esteem has not changed, because if a professor candidate walked into your university using African-American English in the interview, you would not hire him or her. That is the tug that African-American people have.

Julie Washington:

We know we need to teach children to read, but we also know from experience that they have to learn general American English, and so what I'm saying is we're not talking about children not learning general American English, and so what I'm saying is we're not talking about children not learning general American English.

Julie Washington:

We're talking about them learning to read, and one of the things we've learned in our research is reading helps you make the switch to general American English, and so reading and language are intertwined. It's a reciprocal process. Language influences reading and reading influences language. That's something we're learning more and more, and so what we're saying is no, I'm not suggesting at all that children not learn to use the language of education, media and commerce, which is general American English, because if I do that, then I'm relegating them to not really being able to leave their communities and succeed the way that they want to. But what I am saying is that when a young child enters school using a language system at which they have this expertise and we are also trying to teach them a highly language-based skill we need to allow them to use the language that they know to support learning to read.

Lori:

That surprised me, that it well not after you explained it, but it surprised me a bit about the pushback. But that I mean it makes sense, oh.

Julie Washington:

I was doing a talk once and I'm standing at the podium and I saw these four black ladies walk in and I thought, uh-oh, so they standing at the podium?

Julie Washington:

And I saw these four black ladies walk in and I thought, oh. So they stood at the back and afterward they came up to me and said we came in here, we were ready to let you have it. Then we listened oh no, yes, we listened to what you said and it makes so much sense to us and so, yes, I'm completely aware, and I know that it's something that African-American especially educators struggle with, because we know what it's meant for us and I know that, your friends, you need to be able to make that switch and use it in the community, if your community speaks it, and then, when you're in school, eventually, you need to make that transition into kids, and I don't mean beat physically, but there's no reason to hammer this. When kids are coming to school and trying to learn arguably the hardest language skill they will ever need to learn, which is reading. There is no reason to do it at that time. Let children use what they know to learn what they need to know.

Lori:

It makes so much sense, and I'm actually wondering, julie, if we could take a moment, because we're. I think there are some like vocabulary in the article that you wrote, for lack of a better way to put it, or vocabulary that we're using that I think might be helpful for listeners to understand a little bit more deeply, and I'm thinking about, like, the differences between dialect and language variation, and I'm also thinking about the differences between translanguaging and code switching. Are you able to speak about those, just so we can all have a baseline understanding?

Julie Washington:

Sure, so in every discipline we see these changes in vocabulary over time. In every discipline we see these changes in vocabulary over time and the way that we're using words or we switch one word for another because a word starts to take on like a negative connotation for people, and dialect is like that. So when I talk about language variation, I'm still talking about dialect. I'm just not using that word as much anymore. I'm still talking about dialect. I'm just not using that word as much anymore. And it's because people tend to think about dialects as subsystems, which leads people, when you're thinking about people because we conflate people with the way they talk that dialects are seen as less than the major language from which they derive. So we have started to use dialect less and talk about language variation more. Because what African American English is is a variant of standard American English. It's not less than standard American English. It's on a continuum of American English. So if you think about American English on a line, there's General American English, appalachian English, african American English, southern English, midwestern English all on this continuum together. And so by changing the terminology we're trying to change people's view of how these variations in language work. It's not American English is up here at the top and everything else is under that. It's like no, it's on the continuum, and so many of us know many different dialects on this continuum, or kinds of language variation. When I was at Georgia State, I had a student who spoke Southern English, general American English, gullah and African American English, all on this continuum of American English, and so that's why we are talking about language variation more than we are calling it dialect. So it's this sort of shift in the way that we're thinking about variations in language.

Julie Washington:

Translanguaging and code switching are interesting because they're not different. Translanguaging is a kind of code switching, but the way that we talk about code switching, primarily in research and in practice, is making a shift from one code to the other completely. So when I talk about code switching, I'm saying you came in here using African American English, now I want you to switch to the use of general American English, and that's not really what we want children to do, especially when they're learning to read. And other countries are better at this, especially South Africa. I met with a professor there who does translanguaging research and I read a lot of his work and I agree that what translanguaging says is not you need to make a switch is not you need to make a switch. It means that you need to have access to your full linguistic repertoire when you're learning a language skill, so you don't need to switch from what you know to the code that this new thing is using. You need to use your whole repertoire to help you move toward this other system and to help you learn in this system.

Julie Washington:

And so that's kind of the change we're talking about with translanguaging that when we're talking about teaching children to read, if you look at the writing of African-American children who use African-American English, you'll see that it's sprinkled with African-American English. So kids are naturally translanguaging. They're taking the system that they know and they're mixing it with the new system that they're learning, and they do it naturally. And so our view is that if you can allow children to use everything they know about language to learn these new things, that the connections that they'll make will be clearer and stronger than taking a system that you don't really know very well and trying to learn this really hard thing using this new system.

Julie Washington:

Your kids are just not making the connections, and so what we're learning is that, yes, we're able to teach like decoding to African-American children when they're young they look pretty good on our instruments. Then about third grade they don't look very good anymore and we start seeing, like this downward shift and some of it is a shallow knowledge of the things that we're teaching that they've never really made these strong mental representations, strong connections that we thought they were making, and they don't have the opportunity to do so. And in this article we talk about, you know, trans languaging, letting them use their own system to help them make these connections. But also we talk about more opportunity for practice, more exposure, because this is not only new to me as an academic skill, it's new to me as a linguistic skill.

Lori:

Right, and that's what I keep thinking is when kids are like writing is, right, the highest form of output, so language is that in between, and that's really like the bridge that we're talking about here, right, like between reading and writing, and that input, output, if you will, yeah, and I that's what is striking me is like that, that, that this is the bridge. It's something that's familiar and we want to keep that familiarity there.

Julie Washington:

Yeah, it's interesting you say that because the um, the world health Organization, has a picture of translanguaging that I use, and the picture is of a person with a puzzle piece and a hole in the bridge, and the job is to take that piece and fit it onto the bridge so that you're bringing these two pieces together, and so that's exactly what it is.

Lori:

I promise, I didn't see that before I said that.

Julie Washington:

It's funny because it took me there. Naturally, and that's exactly what this picture shows. It's that I have this piece that is me and I need to connect what I know to this other piece of the bridge that's in front of me so that these two things make sense for me.

Lori:

Yeah, yeah, and that just seems so like relatable for teachers.

Melissa:

Sorry, melissa, no, it's okay, I was just wondering about. You know, for a teacher or anyone who's unfamiliar with African-American English, I could imagine them thinking like, well, how many differences could there really be? You know, like you gave one example, and I don't even know how I want you to quantify this, julie, but I'm just curious Are there a lot of differences between African American English and general American English?

Julie Washington:

There are a lot of differences, but there don't have to be a lot of differences, there just have to be differences. So one of the examples that I have a doctoral student who is an amazing reading teacher and we just finished writing an article together where she has talked to me about her own experience as a white teacher working with Black kids and teaching them to read, and we use this example in the article as a vignette. And it's her experience. And so she was talking to this child and she was talking about gold. And so like something, gold? And the child stopped her and said do you mean gold like jewelry, or gold like in football or in sports? Because the child can delete the D. And so do you mean gold like a necklace or do you mean gold like football? And she said you know.

Julie Washington:

As a reflection, she stepped back and said I wonder how many words there are like that for this child, where he has to figure out which one I mean Right? And so then she took it upon herself. She said I need to learn more about the dialect, and then she integrated it into her lessons that whenever she knew that there was a word that was going to be impacted by additions or deletions of phonemes or morphemes in African-American English. She integrated them into her teaching, and so it doesn't have to be a hundred of them, it can be 10 of them. But if you use them enough in class and kids have enough to figure out, it doesn't mean they don't comprehend. It means that slows them down while they're trying to figure out which one you mean. And so if we can influence that just by figuring out which things are going to be impacted and integrating it into teaching, then, boy, we could make their jobs a lot easier.

Melissa:

That was my next question, for you was, like you know, most of the people listening right now are probably teachers and they're probably asking like, well, what do I do? And is that the recommendation is, like you know, knowing the students in front of you, whatever the language variation is of the students that you have, is it learning about those variations?

Julie Washington:

Well said, Whoever's sitting in front of you, you need to know what they're doing differently with language, and you'll hear it. And the more kids there are in the classroom, the more likely the teacher is familiar with what they're doing. And so, instead of just thinking, wow, these kids never use final consonants, and thinking about it in like a pejorative way, think about it as it relates to your instruction and instead say, wow, these kids aren't using final consonants. I wonder if they can hear them when I'm using them during reading instruction. I wonder if they'll recognize them and include them when they're spelling. And the answer's no, often the way that you perceive it. And so if you say with instead of with, I promise you you will spell it W-I-F. And so the first thing is to know who's sitting in front of you, who are the kids sitting in front of me? What kinds of variants do I hear in their language? How might these variants impact learning to read? And because we now know that reading is a language skill, what your children are doing with language will absolutely impact reading in some way, and so your first job is to learn about the variation and then to think about how, when you're teaching phonology or phonemic awareness one, how it might influence what you're doing. Two, how you might integrate it in to help kids hear the differences and learn the differences. And then to read.

Julie Washington:

That's one of the things that's often missing, especially in urban classrooms, is reading. Reading is not just about instruction, it's about reading. It's about practice. Good readers read, good writers write, good speakers speak, and so you're never going to be a good reader without the opportunity to read, and I do not want to hear these kids don't have any books at home. We'll send some home.

Julie Washington:

I don't want to hear their parents don't read to them. You know what, if you have kids who are struggling with reading, we all know enough about reading to know that parents may also be struggling, and so I don't want to hear that. What I want to see is reading in classrooms and in urban classrooms where so many kids are struggling. I understand that teachers get really overwhelmed by the number of kids in their room who are struggling with reading and they really get focused on the instruction piece, but I know that my kids went to schools where kids weren't struggling with reading and what you saw in those classrooms was kids sprawled out on beanbags reading a book. You saw kids in the library sitting on the floor reading books. You saw kids everywhere reading because the teachers weren't as stressed with the reading instruction piece. But what I am saying is that, even in the presence of all of that difficulty with learning to read, reading has to be included, not just reading instruction.

Melissa:

Yeah, and we can read to the kids in school.

Julie Washington:

Yes, I love when you read to kids and kids love it. I mean, I remember when teachers are reading chapter books especially, and they're reading something really exciting, and they say, well, that's it for today.

Lori:

And you're like no, I know, I know. And they say, well, that's it for today, and you're like no, I know, I know. I also think, julie, there are so many options, right, like with the, what are they called? Like the, those taken plays, their play, they're called playaways that, like kids could check out of the library of school, gives them a pair of headsets, take it home and listen. Right, I mean, that could be something that a parent and a kid put a headset in and listen together and have that shared experience.

Melissa:

I mean there's so many YouTube there's just so much.

Lori:

That's right. So I love that idea of like taking away the excuses, because it really is. There's so many options.

Julie Washington:

That's right. There are ways for kids to get access to books so many ways.

Lori:

I think that kind of leads me to think about this, that idea of like biases, like kind of, as an educator, I have to check my biases at the door, right Like it's. I have to think about this in a like we started off the conversation in a really strength-based way and how can I make it happen? If it's not happening, how can I support this effort, rather than thinking like in a detrimental way, which I know is like such a challenge when you're in the mix every single day? So we'll put it out there we love you teachers. It's hard.

Julie Washington:

It's also a challenge when it's your life orientation. So if you believe this about kids who use language in a certain way or who look a certain child, you can't learn, I promise you. All the teachers in the room will say well, of course I believe that. So it's hard to change something that you don't know is an issue for you. It's hard to change something that you don't know is an issue for you. So in some ways, at first you have to identify your biases and once you identify them, then work on changing them.

Julie Washington:

You know, many years ago, when I was in Michigan and I still have these data and maybe someday in some life I'll published them we gave teachers, parents and children the same survey and we called it a self-efficacy survey, and we asked them all the same questions and the questions were things like does this child, or do you or does your child, have the potential to go on to college? Will your child be a college graduate? Will this child be a college graduate? And these were kids in kindergarten, first and second grade, and what we learned was that teachers viewed kids' potential based on their current performance. So even if you were in first grade, if you were struggling with reading, the teacher said on this survey this child is not going to go on to college.

Julie Washington:

Oh my God, then what is the point of continuing to school? Move on and become a college graduate. So that's a bias that not only influences your thinking, but it will absolutely influence the way you instruct this child. Research on teacher expectations talk about them as self-fulfilling prophecies that if you believe this about children, it becomes prophetic because it influences the way that you instruct them. So these are not glib. You need to change your biases. Unimportant issues they are absolutely critical to the outcomes and the future of the children who are sitting in front of you.

Julie Washington:

And I imagine the language plays a huge part in that because, like you said earlier, and I imagine the language plays a huge part in that because, like you said earlier, if it's a language variation seen as low prestige, like you've mentioned, what does that are what your future is going to be and that has significant consequences for not only overall academic outcomes but for whether a teacher actually believes that children can read or will learn.

Melissa:

And so and that just kind of broke my heart, because I mean you saying even in, like kindergarten, first grade, but we still need to teach them Exactly.

Julie Washington:

And we need for that teaching to not be perfunctory. I'm teaching them because I'm getting paid to teach them. It needs to be. I'm teaching them so that this child will have the best possible outcomes that he or she can have and will be able to go on and do the things they want to do in their life. That's what we're doing as teachers. As a university instructor, it's clear to me that I have these eager undergrads sitting in front of me who someday want to be doing what I'm doing or things that I have done, and my job is to prepare them for that. And when they come to that process with different kinds of skills and abilities and challenges, then I have to change what I'm doing with that student in order to be sure that they get the content in the class. And I know that that's my job and I know teachers know it's their job too. But this issue of what are your biases? What do you really think about the students sitting in front of you? How does their language use influence what you think?

Lori:

It makes me think so much of the uh opportunity myth from TNTP, where they found that the four key resources that students need in their daily school experiences are grade level, appropriate assignments, strong instruction, deep engagement and what we're talking about high expectations teachers who believe that students can meet grade level standards.

Lori:

And that always strikes me right. Like I send my kid off to soccer practice three times a week, do I send her with a coach who thinks that she's not going to be able to meet the standards? And if that she's not, the standards of the play, the practice, the game and if she's not, then I I put my faith in the coach that he's going to teach her, not that he's going to say, well, I guess you're just not going to keep playing soccer right Like, we're going to just teach you what you need to know. Like you said, julie, we're going to practice it right and we're going to keep trying. We're going to keep learning together. But my expectation is that you're going to learn how to do this skill or this thing and I'll keep teaching you how to do it, because I think you can and because I'm teaching you how to do it Right.

Julie Washington:

And I'm going to teach every child in front of me to play soccer the best that I can and the best that they can. They can, yeah Right. But you know, rod Page, who was one of our former secretaries of education, I, those students are getting the same high quality instruction as their students are with more resources, because those low expectations are a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Melissa:

I always put my teacher hat on. You know, like, as a teacher, I'm just wondering, like, what do I do now, right, like if I, if I want to learn more? Julie, do you have any recommendations for teachers of where they can go to learn about different language variations, african American English specifically?

Julie Washington:

Yeah, sure, I mean, there are a few of us out here who are doing this work. It's not just me. There are a number of us who are doing it. There are a number of us who are doing it, and so if you look for those people, the work that they're doing, you know Julie Washington, lakeisha Johnson, brandi Gatlin Nash, nicole Patton, terry Jana Edding at LSU, monique Mills, who's at the University of Houston. There are a bunch of us who are looking at these issues with children in very different ways, and some of us who are in the trenches trying to change it, like Ryan Lee James, who was a student of mine and who's now out there in the trenches in Atlanta trying to influence outcomes.

Julie Washington:

There are a bunch of us who are doing this. So there is us who are doing this. So there is go to the research. The research is there. The lists of features are there. How they influence language and spelling and reading and writing are all out there, and so you can look for those Also. I learned and they are I don't think they're, you know, like letting people know. Well, enough is the LAUSD, the Los Angeles Unified School District, has a program called um. Oh, I know, I'm not going to remember it because I'm talking.

Melissa:

I think we wrote it down. Is it the Academic English Mastery Program? That's it.

Julie Washington:

The Academic English Mastery Program. So on their website they have taken all these different language variations Hawaiian-influenced English, spanish-influenced English, african-american English and listed the differences that you will see in those language variations from general American English, and I think that's a fantastic resource. And California, you know which I've been here now for two years is so diverse, and so there's so much linguistic diversity here, and so the schools are encountering it every day, and we're not just talking about kids who speak other languages, we're talking about children who have within language variation, so they use American English in a way that is different in their communities, and so I think that's a great resource. But teachers should also be reading. Like.

Julie Washington:

You came to me because of an article and we wrote it. I was happy American Educator approached me about writing it and I was really happy to do it because of the wide audience that it has among teachers. And so Mark and I got together Mark Seidenberg, and wrote this article, and we were both very excited because we knew that our target audience is not just our friends, fellow researchers, but also the teachers that we're trying to influence, and this is a publication that teachers read.

Lori:

Yeah Well, I'm linking everything. I know it's so hard. I'm linking everything and I have the resource from the LAUSD that has some great printables. So just a little plug there for educators listening it's linked in the show notes. Check it out, there's some printables. But also in the article that we're talking about here with Julie, there is a table that helps us understand the key features of African-American English. If you're looking for a resource for yourself, just to kind of start with, I think it's a really nice little like introduction overview to it and then you can go a little bit deeper. So quick plug for that, Julie. Is there anything that we're missing that you'd like to share that you just feel compelled to say as we close out this podcast?

Julie Washington:

Yeah, the only thing I really want to say is I don't want teachers to get overwhelmed by the information, because I realize how hard they're working. They have always been working hard and are working harder still in the face of the challenges that the pandemic created, and so you know this is not a. You need to work harder, harder, harder. This is not what that conversation is about. This conversation is about you know. You know we have a science of reading. Many teachers are still learning it. Some of them already know it, and what we're asking you is to look at the children who are sitting in front of you and differentiate the science of reading based on what those students' needs are, whether their students are African-American, american, indian, latino or Latinx, whatever the challenges are or whatever the student looks like in front of you. Take some time to figure out how your instruction might be impacted and see it as something that you can do to make reading less cognitively difficult for children. We're not asking you to change children. We're asking you to adapt your instruction to include them.

Lori:

What struck me, julia, from an earlier part of this conversation is when you said we're essentially not taking away or changing what students are learning. It's how we are teaching, and you know you might teach it one way to everyone and then realize, oh my gosh, this group of students needs a little bit more, or these kids need a little bit more, so you're going to change your approach there.

Lori:

Right, and that's where I think I'm struck is we're not saying change what you're doing, the what stays the same. That's that I think I'm struck is we're not saying change what you're doing, the what stays the same. That's that body of reading, science, research, that's right. I just can't say that enough. That's what's really striking me. I took a nice note while you were talking.

Melissa:

But it's how they get there, that's right. Yeah, we'll make such a puzzle piece, right, it's how we help them get there.

Julie Washington:

Yep, yes, yes. And one more thing I would want to say and I've said it over and over again and I just want to punctuate it Children are not blank slates. They do not come to school knowing nothing. They know a lot, they have a lot of skills, and it's incumbent upon us to figure out what those skills are and how we can leverage them to help them learn to read. They know so much and they have a lot of linguistic expertise. It is not always in the language of the classroom or the language of print which is more important. And so what they know and what we need them to know, we're extending what they know. We're not erasing what they know, so we're not trying know. We're extending what they know. We're not erasing what they know, so we're not trying to get rid of what you already know. We're trying to extend what you know to include what we're trying to teach you.

Lori:

Why do you do what you love for education and for literacy?

Julie Washington:

I do it because it's important. I do it because it's important and I know that the children that we are interested in are underserved, understudied and we need to know so much more because they're struggling not only now, but we know how much they will struggle in the future unless we get this right.

Lori:

Well, we are beyond grateful for you being here today. It was a true honor. We just adore your work and thank you for being here. We're just really grateful. I don't know what else to say other than thank you.

Julie Washington:

Thank you, it was so much fun, thank you.

Lori:

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Melissa:

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Lori:

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Melissa:

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Lori:

We appreciate you so much and we're so glad you're here to learn with us.