ABSTRACT
Most teachers in the United States identify as white, yet classrooms are increasingly filled with students of color. One way in which white teachers maintain racialized discrimination against their students of color is through upholding the dominant yet problematic standard language ideology, the belief that standardized English is more communicative, grammatical, and correct than vernacular dialects, such as African American Vernacular English, which are often spoken by students of color and their families. The standard language ideology has been linked to dominant racial ideologies that privilege and maintain white dominance. Critical language awareness and its pedagogies guide teachers to work with their students to discuss and disrupt these dominant yet erroneous racialized beliefs about language. This chapter is co-authored by a teacher educator and a secondary English language arts (ELA) teacher practitioner who seek to provide secondary ELA and Social Studies teachers with critical language awareness theory and critical language pedagogical strategies to inspire and guide their instruction regarding language variation and racism in the United States today. Specifically, we propose strategies for teaching about language ideologies and racism through Angie Thomas’s novel The Hate U Give.
