This paper explores the long and winding road to integrating linguistic approaches to vernacular dialects in the classroom. After exploring past roadblocks, the author shares vignettes and classroom practices of her collaborator, Rachel Swords, who has succeeded in bringing Contrastive Analysis and Code-switching to her second and third-grade…

The goal of instruction in mainstream dialect (MD) acquisition should be to expand students' oral communication skills to include skills needed for academic and economic success, thereby making alternate dialect speakers bidialectic. This implies recognizing students' home dialect as a valid linguistic system and a part of their identity. Although…