Podcast appearances and mentions of Julie A Washington

While working with students, one educator came to a realization that put her on a path to fascinating research in the Science of Reading. In this episode, Jasmine Rogers—manager and coach with the In Schools program at the DC Reading Clinic and an early literacy intervention lead at American University—shares her story and delves into her research on dialects and best practices for structured literacy instruction. She discusses Black language and how it connects with the language comprehension strand of Scarborough's Reading Rope. Jasmine also offers recommendations for classroom teachers who have bidialectal students.Show notes:DC Reading ClinicS1-22: Success using the Science of Reading: Mary ClaymanJasmine Rogers - Linkedin S4-07: Linguistic Variety and Dialects: Difference, not error: Julie Washington“Teaching Reading to African American Children,” by Julie A. Washington and Mark S. Seidenberg“Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy,” by April Baker-Bell“An Informed Lens on African American English,” by Megan-Brette Hamilton“Multilingualism and Codeswitching in Education,” by Nkonko M. KamwangamaluQuotes:“As a teacher, a Black woman, who speaks Black English, who knows the language, who is very well versed in structured literacy, if I overlooked this, if that caught me off guard a little bit, then that means that could potentially catch someone else off guard.” —Jasmine Rogers“With language comprehension, and considering in your native language, there may be a word that doesn't necessarily match up with a language that you are learning in the classroom. So you have to then use your incredible cognitive skills that speak two completely different codes, comprehend what is happening, and then tie that back into, of course, the Rope to become a fluent reader.” —Jasmine Rogers“I consider Black English to be a very complex and complicated language…but I think typically in society it has been viewed very negatively. You can see in the media and in research where people have talked about it and used negative connotations. And I think those beliefs from society have seeped into the classroom.” —Jasmine Rogers“A strength of children that are bidialectal is the similar strength to students that are bilingual—they have an ability to take language that is different from theirs and translate it. That right there is an asset.” —Jasmine Rogers“The languages that we speak and bring from home also are not wrong. They're simply different. And we're gonna work together so that we take what we know differently and come together with a common language so that we're communicating with one another.” —Jasmine Rogers“We have got to give our students access to this code so that they can become literate and run our society one day.” —Jasmine Rogers

In this episode, Susan Lambert is joined by Dr. Julie Washington to discuss linguistic variety and dialects as difference, not error, and how to best support all students as they learn to read. Dr. Washington, professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and a speech-language pathologist, offers practical advice for educators teaching reading to children who don't use general American English and discusses how to do so in a way that respects students' community languages and dialects. She reminds educators that students rise or fall to the expectations set for them, and encourages educators to remember that if they embrace language variety as something that needs to be understood and incorporated into developing successful readers, they will develop successful readers.Quotes:“Teachers need to know about the language variety that their students are speaking.” —Dr. Julie Washington“Educating yourself as a teacher and recognizing where there is variety and difference and not error is critical for how you'll respond to it.” —Dr. Julie WashingtonShow Notes:Teaching Reading to African American Children by Julie A. Washington and Mark S. SeidenbergCultivating Genius: An Equity Framework for Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy by Gholdy Muhammad

Mitchell Brookins, education consultant extraordinaire (and one of the moderators of the wildly popular Facebook group Science of Reading - What I Should Have Learned in College) talks with us about this article, titled Teaching Reading to African American Children: When Home and School Language Differ by Julie A. Washington and Mark Seidenberg. We know that reading depends on spoken language. How do language variants affect how we teach reading to African American students? What are key features of African American English (AAE)? How does AAE differ from General American English (GAE)? How do we utilize this information as practitioners to empower our students? Listen and learn with us! Visit OUR WEBSITE to subscribe to our newsletter and podcast! https://www.literacypodcast.com/Connect with Melissa & Lori:TwitterInstagramFacebook

Our guest this episode is Julie A. Washington, chair of and professor in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Georgia State University’s College of Education and Human Development. Professor Washington specializes in language development and disorders in high-risk populations; early literacy and language interactions; African-American Child English; and African-American student achievement. Her work focuses on understanding cultural dialect use in young African-American children, with a specific emphasis on language assessment, literacy attainment, and academic performance. In addition, she is an affiliate faculty of Georgia State’s Language and Literacy Initiative.Currently, Professor Washington is a principal investigator on the Georgia Learning Disabilities Research Innovation Hub, funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health. This research initiative is focused on improving early identification of reading disabilities in elementary-school-aged African-American children who speak cultural dialects.Professor Washington joined Chautauquan Daily editor and Institution lecture and literary arts associate Sara Toth for an in-studio conversation on July 25, shortly after delivering a lecture in the Chautauqua Amphitheater as part of a week themed “The Life of the Spoken Word.”