“IT’s A LANGUAGE VARIATION, AND IT HAS ITS OWN STRUCTURE”: K–12 EDUCATORS IN MARYLAND AND VIRGINIA TALK ABOUT LANGUAGE VARIATION IN THE CLASSROOM

As sociolinguistic research has revealed, language variation can have concrete implications in the classroom. Students who speak nonstandardized varieties of a given language may face linguistic hurdles at school, and neither students nor teachers leave their language patterns at the door when they enter their classrooms. Accordingly, there is a need for scholars to work closely with educators to explore the real-world educational implications of language differences. This audio feature collects the voices and insights from 14 pre- and in-service teachers from a range of grade levels and content areas in Virginia and Maryland who have worked with sociolinguists in week-long professional development workshops. Teachers discuss how learning about language variation positively affected their teaching practices and their relationships with their students and how they have gained the information and confidence to be able to work more effectively with culturally and linguistically diverse students in their classrooms. They also share creative and insightful strategies and practices that they have used in their classrooms to engage with their students and to support linguistically informed teaching.