For our final Big Sky conversation, we sit down with Dr. Julie Washington from UC Irvine to explore how language, dialect, and poverty intersect in literacy. Dr. Washington brings her wealth of experience as a speech-language pathologist to discuss the unique challenges of identifying reading disabilities in African American children, dialect's role in learning, and how systemic biases impact educational outcomes. It's an eye-opening conversation highlighting the critical need to understand and support students from all linguistic backgrounds.

Julie Washington, Ph.DS., CCC-SLP. Dr. Julie Washington is a professor at the School of Education at the University of California – Irvine (UCI) and a fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. As a Speech-Language Pathologist, she directs the Learning Disabilities Research Innovation Hub, funded by NICHD, and the Dialect, Poverty, and Academic Success Lab at UCI. She also serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the language section of the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. Dr. Washington's research explores the intersection of literacy, language variation, and poverty, focusing on understanding the role of language dialects in assessing and identifying language and reading disabilities in African American children. She also focuses on improving methods to develop oral language and written language skills in children growing up in poverty. 

Theme Song
Sound of Home, composed and performed by Jens Koch and recorded at Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park. All rights to the recording and song are reserved by Jens Koch. Find him on Spotify.