In this volume's foundational chapter, Fillmore and Snow note that "Given the diversity of social and cultural backgrounds of the students they serve, educational practitioners need a solid grounding in sociolinguistics and in language behavior across cultures.... Facts about normal language variation are not widely known..." (p. 32). I agree wholeheartedly and endorse the authors' proposed reformulations to teacher education and development so that facts about normal language variation become more widely known and accessible to educators. Lack of knowledge about dialects is a problem not only among teachers, however. In fact, throughout American society, rhetoric surrounding linguistic diversity often frames language variation such that it "is associated with a range of social ills and seen as something that needs to be contained, possibly even something to be fearful of" (Piller, 2016: 2). Changing this widespread ideology requires broad-based efforts, in part because educational policy is influenced by non-teacher shareholders, including parents and politicians. However, given the role that teachers play in the intellectual development of our children and youth, broadly equipping teachers with materials that promote sociolinguistic education may, over time, erode entrenched ideologies. Using such materials in the classroom will also expand teachers' knowledge of sociolinguistics and language variation that will inform their teaching throughout the school day. This chapter examines some efforts to help educators include language awareness in their classrooms. Because the rationale for such programs is made convincingly in the foundational chapter of this volume, no additional theoretical rationale for such work is provided; instead, evidence of the benefits of such programs for students and teachers is presented as a complementary, practical rationale.

Programs that promote awareness about language variation aimed at both school and community audiences have been developed in several areas of the country. The Language and Life Project at NC State University (https://languageandlife.org/), the West Virginia Dialect Project (http://dialects.english.wvu.edu/), the Wisconsin Englishes Project (http://csumc.wisc.edu/wep/), and other entities created by linguists have adopted proactive, multifaceted approaches to increasing the availability of linguistically accurate information about variation.