Dr. Julie Washington joins Susan Lambert to discuss linguistic variety and dialects as difference, not error, and how to best support all students as they learn to read. Dr. Washington is a professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and a speech language pathologist. She offers practical advice for educators teaching reading to children who don’t use general American English, discusses how to do so in a way that respects students’ community languages, reminds educators that students rise or fall to the expectations set for them, and encourages educators to embrace language variety and incorporate it into the development of successful readers.