ABSTRACT
This chapter expands on why dialect diversity should be integrated into the school curriculum and illustrates how it can be implemented in English language arts, social studies, and elsewhere. It presents excerpts from dialect awareness curricula that have been used successfully in several locations, including a Northern metropolitan area and several areas in the rural and urban South. The chapter exemplifies the sort of information about dialects that students need to know and that they enjoy learning as they examine the languages of their own community and other communities. To build the knowledge that students need to understand linguistic diversity and its social implications, schools can offer dialect awareness units. Dialect awareness programs, therefore, need to include many dialects to represent the wide range of language diversity in American society. In fact, experience with programs in schools and communities indicates are most effective and least threatening when they do not isolate a single language variety in discussion of language variation.
